I've been trying and trying to reinstall either Win 98SE or ME back into an older PC that has XP. The machine is too old and slow for XP. My friend put XP in this older Dell OptiPlex GN and it's brought it to a screeching halt. I've read the posts saying use a Win98 boot disk etc. to no avail. I made certain that the first boot is the floppy disk , still no good. Continually getting disk error message. Went an downloaded the "superboot disk", that didn't work. Please help.

you must delete the xp partition. run FDISK and follow the procedure 'delete non-dos partition' or use this: "Download Bootable ISO Image of Active@ KillDisk to burn CD" http://download2.lsoft.net/boot-cd-... Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.'

"Continually getting disk error message." What disk error message ??? There are many.

Yep, "... still no good & didn't work" tells us nothing useful - either you've a bad bootdisk (downloaded?) or there are other issues - the whole point of error messages is to give an indication of the problem - hard to do if kept a secret Killdisk doesn't have to be on a CD... I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter

Okay, I have replaced the floppy and I know it works. I downloaded a new "bootdisk" and IT works in other PC's. I can't Fdisk because it will not boot from the boot disk. I downloaded the utility that mattie suggested, however, I don't have a clue as to what to do with it. I did use a previous version of "Kill Disk" and after was unable to boot up anything. I was able to reinstall XP, that's all I could get to boot and install. The disk error message is simply, "remove disks or other media, press any key to restart. Please advise.

download and install linux (its free and legal) http://www.ubuntu.com/ really all you need is at lest a 4gb harddrive, 500mhz processer, 256mb of ram, and a cd drive.

Kevin, thanks but this PC can't handle the linux O/S. That's why I'm attempting to get rid of the XP. This PC belongs to an elerly gentleman who needs this PC, can't afford to get another or upgrade. It's just that the XP slowed it down so badly and I thought that the Win98 would be better/faster. Again, thanks for the info/suggestion.