[Mike0001]

Originally Posted by robyncr The cd I have has the i386 folder on the cd. But if you read my latest post you would see the new problem i'm having I would please like you to address that if you could, I'm not sure what you told me has anything to do with what I asked in my latest post. Thankyou in advance.

If you want to sort it out yourself that is fine by me!

[philthomas]

I have read through this thread and I think the advice Mike has given you is the only way to go ..... i.e. get a full XP Installation disk.

As far as I can make out the Dell Dimension 4700 was shipped with a Recovery Partition, which would have been accesible to you by pressing CTRL + F11 at boot up.
From what you have described, you seem to have fdisked the Hard Drive, installed ME and partly W98, so it's most probable that you have deleted the Recovery partition. You could try it though ... you never know, you may be liucky.

If it is deleted (as a result of your use of fdisk), you are stuffed, without a full XP Installation CD

[robyncr]

I want to thank everyone for there help I ended up fixing it my self by going into systems device manager and making sure all the IDE devices were enabled after that it worked like a charm, the computer is all done and ready to go back to it's owner, in perfectly working order. Thanks for all the suggestions but none of them worked, if maybe you read what I wrote you would of .understood that i'll I needed was how to get the cd/ dvd drives to be regonized in my computer.Oh well problem was solved. Thanks for trying.

[philthomas]

Glad you managed to find a workaround, but you certainly went around it in an unconventional and very long-winded way.

If you have an original Windows XP Installation Disk, this is bootable and allows you to format and install from the CD. There is no need to have a previous Operating System installed to install XP, which is where you went wrong. Even with an upgrade disk, there is no need to install W98 or ME, or to use fdisk, as the installation wizard will ask you to insert the qualifying product disk, during installation. The only thing you need to do is change the boot drive sequence in bios to make the CD the first boot drive.

I think you also may have made your own life more difficult, by deleting the Recovery partition with fdisk, as you and then needed to do a clean installation.

Anyway, another time bear this in mind and the job will be much simpler

[robyncr]

Thank you for your input, but when I received the computer there was nothing on it and I tried to boot it from the windows original cd but it wouldn't, even after changing the boot order in the Bios, so it may sound like I went through a bunch of unnecessary crap but I did what I had to do to get it to work, I'm not real computer savvy so I'm pretty damn proud of what I accomplished on my own. Thank you.

[philthomas]

Well it seems as though you have learnt a lot from your efforts ..... the reason both Mike and I were trying to put you straight at the beginning, was based on your comments in your first post i.e. "Cause I know to be able to install windows xp you already have to have an operating system installed".

We were trying to tell you that this is not correct, but you seemed reluctant to accept any advice and were ploughing ahead in the wrong direction.

I have no idea exactly how you achieved the resolution, but if you feel happy and proud, who am I to deny you