my computer kept turning on and off every 20 seconds so i tried to reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows xp home edition it was almost finished the it quit because there was a problem. I tried installing pro edition and now it says missing asmd file and i can't do anything with the comuter it starts with installation page that says error and shuts down when i press ok. Please can someone help?????

my computer kept turning on and off every 20 seconds so i tried to reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows xp home edition it was almost finished the it quit because there was a problem. I tried installing pro edition and now it says missing asmd file and i can't do anything with the comuter it starts with installation page that says error and shuts down when i press ok. Please can someone help?????

you could have used the restore prcedure before , but it looks as if your going to have to pout the XP CD into the CD player, and restart eerything over, just do everything the CD asks for and you should get a clean install.
you may have to upgrade to XP Pro, or professional before you get it to work correctly again,
goodluck,
0dd

Write down the exact error your computer is giving you and then Google it on another computer.

You may also have an overheating issue, check all your fans (CPU, Case, Power Supply, Graphics card) and see if they are turning when you have it powered on for the 20 or so seconds you said it runs for. Check that your harddrive makes noise (like its working) when you start the computer.

If you are doing a clean install unplug all devices from your tower except the mouse monitor and keyboard. It will cut down on possible driver errors and get your install to complete. Also if you are looking to save any data and have not formatted already change the install directory from c:\windows to something like c:\winxp that way it is a clean install it will give you access to the documents and setting in the other windows directory when signed in as an administrator in safemode. once backed up then do the format clean install.

hope this helps

Could be a bad hard drive......
It fits the profile you gave us...

XP rebooting = due to file corruption
Reinstallation = missing files -> file corruption persists

I would run a bootable test on the drive...such as one form the drive's manufacturer to determine if its not dieing.....

could also boot into recovery console from the xp cd and do a chkdsk /r

not judging, but is it a genuine xp disk.. if not that could be part of the issue, but it sounds like a hard drive issue to me and as a tech and personally i have been there before

what kind of drive what type and how big

my computer kept turning on and off every 20 seconds so i tried to reformat the hard drive and reinstall windows xp home edition it was almost finished the it quit because there was a problem. I tried installing pro edition and now it says missing asmd file and i can't do anything with the comuter it starts with installation page that says error and shuts down when i press ok. Please can someone help?????
I am willing to bet money that the capacitors are blown on your motherboard. Open up the computer and look at your motherboard. inspect all of your capacitors. They should be completely flat on top. Look for any leaking on top or bottom of the capacitors. Also look for a rounded top, these indicate a blown cap. <img src="http://www.auroracomputer.ca/images/bad_cap.jpg">
If you find a blown cap you can fix it if you have a soldering iron and the right capacitors. make sure the capacitors you get are the same V and µF. if you don't want to change the caps then you must buy a new motherboard.

agreed, blown caps are almost always the cause of windows random reboots/errors. Could be ram, memtest will tell you if that's the problem. Also check the caps in your power supply. In our shop here, blown caps on the board and/or psu are quite common, mostly due to the fact people don't clean their pc's as often as they should, also, most cases have the cheapest psu's availble. Hope that provides a bit of insight to your problems.

Heat, motherboard (caps) CPU, RAM, power supply, bad drive /s or cable /s, Infection?!?!?

Not enough info only that attemps with different media fails but this is after the problems started.

Let see if jaderyan2 comes back with some feedback.

Check your power supply