OX-27,
I assume from your posts that you are installing Win ME from a non-bootable CD, using a boot floppy.
when trying to partition the drive using FDISK the system hangs at 45%
The problem as you describe it is not with creating the partition, but either with formatting it or subsequently verifying it - I believe that this is the latter, and probably a Scandisk problem.
I had similar problems installing Windows 98.
Can you edit the autoexec file (copy it first) on the floppy so that you can just boot with CD support, but not run the setup routines? Then you can run fdisk from the command line, then, assuming this works you can format the disk with FAT 32.
On the CD there should be a readme text file with useful info, including the location of further help files on the CD. You should find Setup.txt and read the troubleshooting section. Obviously you can do this on any PC, or with the XP disk installed.
For Win 98 the following was eerily familiar:
"if you have problems while Setup is running ScanDisk, you can bypass ScanDisk in Setup by running Setup with the /IS
option. To do this, type the following command:
setup /is
NOTE: Bypassing ScanDisk during Setup is not recommended.
If you do, there may be problems with your hard disk
that could cause Windows not to install or run correctly. "
This allowed me to get past a similar problem installing Win 98
HTH
SD