I have recently purchased a refurbished dell pc that had been wiped leaving no operating system just the initial start up, but after switching on the pc i am prompted with a c:\> which i can't get past, does anyone know how to do this so that i can install the windows 98 software from CD rom? any help would be very much appreciated, many thanx.

Get a windows 98 boot disk here,or set the computer to boot to the cdrom in the BIOS/SETUP
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

Like Caperjack said get a boot disk and boot from the floppy. When you are at the c: prompt make sure you have your windows 98 cd in and type in the path to your cd drive for example: D: or E:.
Then type setup or setup.exe and you should be able to install then.

whats the best windows media player to get my is pretty old

win media player 8 or less in my opinion . 5,6 and 7 here
http://oldversion.com/program.php?n=wmp