was having some minor problems getting online with my computer so a friend had the bright idea we should just take everything off and reinstall everything . I TOLD HIM THAT THE SYSTEM DISKS THAT I HAD WENT TO ANOTHER COMPUTER ( it was a Dell Omniplex other one is a Dell dimension but he said it should not matter because both are Dell , i do not have the system disks for other computer so he just used the disks for the other Dell comp. ) Took everything off - but having a problem putting everything back on - windows XP - and i get an error message " cannot load operating system " , so we tried to load an operating system from floppy disk drive (DOS 6.0) didnt work . we tried to load operating system 3.1 from floppy . that didnt work . so i am not sure what to do . all i can get is the BIOS screen or boot screen , but when i put in a floppy boot disk it does not boot up like it should . i have made boot disks from another computer but they dont start up . Do i need to buy a new harddrive ???? or do i need to install some kind of driver (dell website has drivers i can install) . please if there is anyone who can help i would really appreciate it . i just need help getting it to boot up from a boot disk ( in BIOS i made sure that i checked floppy drive and when i put a floppy in the little light comes on and it makes a noise so i know that my floppy drive is being read but for some reason it just does not boot ! please help

Did the system really try to boot from floppy or is there only a noise during the initialization. In that case, the system only checks, what capacity the inserted floppy disk has. Try the boot menu key and select the floppy as boot device. As far as I know, on a Dell it is the F12 key. Please send a reply, if you solved the problem !!!

Sounds like your friend got ya in some pretty deep dodo. It's likely you're gonna need to reinstall XP. Give us the Dell Service Tag Number; it's on one of the labels. We'll see what's available to recover your machine and (with a little luck) get it restored. Skip

Excuse me but surely as this is the MS-DOS forum this topic does not belong here ???

No, it doesn't belong here but it won't kill us to try and guide jenny to a recovery solution. Skip

There would be more help in the correct forum as it attracts more traffic.......

Probably true MWCC...only traffic we really lack here is from the OP though. :-) Skip