Strange behaviour with my dual core system

Question

i have intel dual core system with 160gb seagate harddisk and 1 gb transcend ram capacity. recently i exchanged my harddisk as per warranty and after installing the same i tried to format the disk by entering windows XP cd in to my sony dvd writer. it seems to be going smooth, but when 9 minutes remain to end the whole process it just hanged up for more than 30 minutes and i have no option rather restarting the system by press-hold on the power off button for a while. next time when i tried to format the same i get a message like " press any key to boot from cd " and it seems to be running suddenly the whole thing hangs up and nothing works out. i tried the same lot of time and my goodness nothing worked out. i will be very much grateful if some one can sort out the problem for me. whether is it the problem of harddisk, ram or motherboard itself. thanks prabha