I bought an old empty hard drive for my mother naively believing I could install windows 98se for her. I am stuck and need an idiots guide!! I have a bootdisk floppy and the windows 98se cd rom. I have changed the boot sequence to boot from the floppy disk first but it just comes up with the following message: press F1 to reboot or F2 to enter setup - should i just give in and pay someone to do it?

Are you sure the HDD is good? Did you set the jumper accordingly & is the HDD being correctly identified by the BIOS? What about the boot floppy...has it been used before & known to be good? Where did you get it? If you downloaded it from a site such as bootdisk.com, the file is used to create a boot floppy (double click & follow the instructions)...don't simply copy it to the floppy disc.

Thanks for your quick response. I bought it from a reputable firm with a 30 day return option so presuming the HDD is ok. Not sure about how to check HDD identified correctly? Dowloaded the disk from bootdisk.com but did just simply click on windows 98 and save to the disk. Unfortunately my laptop and pc at home do not have floppy disk drives so will have to wait until i go to work tomorrow to do anything with the floppy disk - will give it a go tomorrow though so thanks for your help

if your BIOS supports booting from CDRom, set the boot order to CDROM first, and try booting from the win 98SE CDROM my signature does not look like this

mmm… stick with it and you’ll soon get across it all; and know useful things for the future. Having installed a drive correctly – physically – one has to ensure its details are correctly present in the bios; and the message you are getting suggests you have a little more to do in this latter regard…? Below are two links (of many out there on the www) detailing how to physically install a drive. Suggest you check those out first… Then move onto the next three – which detail how to ensure it is detected correctly in the bios…; the second and third of the last two are probably the better to read thru' in full… http://www.helpwithpcs.com/upgradin... http://www.pcmech.com/show/harddriv... http://www.harddriveupgrade.com/add... http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,4... http://www.webtechgeek.com/How-to-i... Once you have drive correctly configured etc. in the bios, you need to run Fdisk and partition/configure it. Then you format the partition(s) and install the OS. Fdisk tutorials: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/255867 (very detailed) http://www.onecomputerguy.com/insta... (clear but not quite so detailed; maybe easier to follow?) http://fdisk.radified.com (again a good less complicated tutorial than the very complete – and excellent - M$-version) Most tutorials opt for a single Primary partition on the drive; OS/apps/utils – and data go into this single partition. However I suggest that it’s better to have at least two partitions; Primary for the OS etc. – and an additional (Extended) partition for data only. This approach safeguards data from an OS crash etc… Typically ’98 can live in a 2-5Gig Primary…; and ‘98 can be fat16 or fat32; logically it would be fat32 if the partition is in excess of 2Gig. As above… stick with it – you’ll soon get across it and be all the more knowledgeable for it; and have saved your pennies for other presents for your Mum, or treats, or whatever…

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robert... is another very useful (excellent) site that will help you to use Fdisk etc...; and also install an OS. Suggest you read thru' this site too...

Thanks very much for your help - nice to know someone has faith in me sorting this out lol! i will start on the light reading then. will post my progress - presuming I have some. Abdul - thanks for response 3 but tried that.