ok ive been trying for 3 dayts straight, im super desperate for help. i was on another site and wanted anyone who may have ideas to go there see what ive done so far and post there or here. its a 3 page thread so i dont want to copy paste it or anything. http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114796 thats the link to the thread. pleeeeeeeease help i really would appriciate it.

"format not suported on drive c. format terminated" It sounds like your hard drive isn't working, and when the bootdisk creates its RAM Drive, that becomes the (tiny, 2Mb) 'C:' drive Enter the CMOS/BIOS and see if the hard drive is listed correctly there - or - from the bootdisk, enter: fdisk and select option (4) to report on drive status - post that info here 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

jboy, I'm wondering if he's trying to format the CDROM? (hard drive is not being found)

Once again, a good reason to assign CD drive letter instead of flapping around. Not much joy in formatting CD. RAMdisk, maybe. If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Well, RAM drive was my first thought - somewhat hard to follow The post at the other site appears to be an exercise in tail chasing. Since they're pursuing it there, and seem to have abandoned this message, my level of interest has dropped to approximately zero 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

What a lot of wasted time and effort by all involved. You have a defective machine that cannot be fixed by yourself. At the very least you need a new hard drive and someone to put it in and set up the system PLUS the cost of the operating system (whatever it is) PLUS I doubt it will be enough to run XP decently. You need a new laptop or spend nearly that much getting this old dog going (for a little while).