Welcome to the forums :emotion-21:

It's very strange that two different OS give you exactly the same errors?

Can you confirm you're (quick-) reformatting the hard drive each time, before reinstalling the OS?

Try booting from the Dell Dimension Resource CD and running the hard drive diagnostics (at the least).  It sounds like a problem with bad sectors on the drive itself are preventing the OS files from properly copying.

I'd suggest a memory test then, since that (and the motherboard) is the other key component to copying data from one drive to another.

ps just ran hard drive test, says everything ok ??????????????, baffles me

thanks for info, but i have tried resource cd, but still get same results. i am begining to think that it may be the hard drive, thanks for your help. kevin.