Reformatting laptop, nothing appears to happen on reboot

[Naffa]

As title. I've been reformatting a friend's laptop, we've gone through the bios setup, cleared the partitions etc. Could deleting the partitions have created any problems? As when the computer reboots and the installation continues, we're presented with nothing other than a pale blue screen. We can move the mouse around, so we know it hasn't frozen. After fifteen or so minutes, nothing appears to have happened. We've used a bootable CD of XP Professional for the install. Could using this cause problems for a laptop?

Does anyone have an idea what could have happened?

Thanks for any help in advance.