I recently got a hold of my dad's old computer and figured it'd be good to learn a few things. First i wanted to completely wipe and reformat the computer so i could start from scratch. It had win98 installed on it, and at the moment id like reinstall either win 98 or win XP (i have cds for both). ive actually already formatted the drive (i think). i can no longer get into windows and it seemed to be fine. i wasnt aware about needing a bootdisk until later. i thought i could just format then slide the disk in and let it do the rest. that doesnt work. ive tried loading the computer from both cds. the win xp just goes into a recovery mode and then the computer more times than not resets itself. the win98 disk does nothing but start me out in dos at the a: prompt. i tried making a boot disk using my own computer, but for some reason i cant copy the disk with the files for the bootdisk onto another floppy. maybe im doing it all wrong, and i feel like a moron. but i would appreciate assistance from anyone with ideas from making a proper bootdisk to making this other computer work.

If you use the Windows xp all you should need to do is go into your BIOS and set your boot order as CD first. Put in the Win xp cd reboot and it should start the process from there. Not knowing your IBM model number I don't know how much ram,hard drive space,or the CPU speed. You may be limited to windows 98 and then the use of a 3.5 floppy boot disk will become critical.

The Win98 CD boots to A:> prompt? If so, key in: SETUP Best

If you want to learn things the best way forward is to first read up on whatever you want to do. There is plenty in Google and in the Go Search on this website. On W98 setup works from the A prompt with some boot disks (floppies). If not then be aware that your CD drive letters will temporarily change as the usual one is grabbed as a "Ramdrive". Often the drive letters just increase by one letter, in some cases you use R drive. Watch the screen while booting with the floppy and it will give useful info. You can change to a CD drive by typing E: at the A Prompt (or whatever letter you need). You then type setup DerekW

Yes indeed - one way to learn is to pay attention to the various onscreen messages & errors. Computers will often tell you what they're doing, which can (in some cases) actually reduce the confusion level We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true

JUst press DEL when booting, set first boot device as cd-rom and run win 98 setup. It's higly illogical to state a computer made the mistake for it was us human beings who programmed it.

lapointe34 Not ALL W98 CD's are bootable. That's why I suggested using boot floppy. DerekW