My floppy is non-functional. Is there any way to format the hard drive and boot without one? Help me plz.

Well you are gonna hafta tell us a little bit more. Define your system. Do you have a laptop, and does it have a cdrom, and does the cdrom boot if given the proper CD? Do you have a desktop, and what sort of configuration is it, and likewise, does it have a cd drive that might boot a proper CD? You obviously posted to this forum from some sort of working computer, can you put the hd of the target computer into the one you posted with, and use it?

It's a desktop PIII/500mhz/128MB. Windows 98SE. I don't believe the cdrom will boot will it? Help me plz.

Normally, the CDROM drive in a computer that new should certainly be capable of booting. You need to get into the bios/setup and set the "boot order," that is, select what first, second, third, if there is an option for 3 or more. Tell us more about your floppy problem. Can you not take the drive temporarily out of whatever you are posting here with? The second thing, of course, is that you have a bootable CD DISK. Not all versions of whambos98 are bootable. If it is, there should be fdisk and or format available on the cd--the very best way--because there is very, very little chance of the programs getting corrupted if it is a factory disk.

The floppy must have been damaged somehow. It tries to read, takes quite some time and then responds that the disk needs to be formatted. This happens with blanks I've tried to use to make a startup disk as well as with the boot disk windows sends out. How could I create a cdrom boot disk and would I then set the cdrom drive to boot first before the hard drive???? I'm obviously clueless and way over my head, but I just picked up a new system and figured I would experiment.

Well, I still need to know what you have. You have a desktop, you just told me about, apparently a bad floppy drive, and a cdrom I don't know what the "new" machine has. You need either access the bios and check that the floppy is still setup right, and that the cable didn't come loose. to replace the floppy drive with the one in your other machine-even temporarily for a test replace the drive with a new/used good drive you got somewhere else. Or try booting the machine with a bootable cd. If you have an OEM version of windows 98 CD it should boot. Some people insist that Windows 98 RETAIL CD will boot, but I have 2 or 3 here that will not. To create a bootable CD, you need a "cd burner" and software to burn a cd THAT WILL HANDLE making a bootable disk. Most software, certainly Adaptec or Nero, in the last couple of years, will make a bootable CD. What you normally do is make a windows startup floppy on a "good" machine, and using that floppy along with your cdrw software, it will create a bootable cd. Whatever you put on the floppy disk will end up on the special "bootable" part of the cd. When it boots, it will "think" it is the A: drive (the bootable section) and the "rest" or main data part of the cd will be D: or E: depending on how many hd's you have and so on.

new floppy drive is $10~15 new, used one is even cheaper, ask local shop if they have a used one for sale. by the the time you are done figuring out with the cd, you will be be done with the new floppy drive.