ARGH!!! I need help!!!

try a different cdrom

Your problem looks complicated.But,I think,you should first manually copy and paste all the winxp or win98files from your cdrom to a selected drive in your hard disk.Generally,people selects the other drive than the main drive like c so that if you need to get rid of viruses or reinstal,you can go to dos mode and delete all c drive files and run setup from d drive or the other drive.Make sure that you are not overwriting anything..if you have,you have to delete thosewindows from dos mode..

from your cdrom to a selected drive in your hard disk.Generally,people selects the other drive than the main drive like c so that if you need to get rid of viruses or reinstal

WHAT ???

"from your cdrom to a selected drive in your hard disk.Generally,people selects the other drive than the main drive like c so that if you need to get rid of viruses or reinstal"
I don't know why are you mad at me,maybe because of the spellings :sad: sorry :-|
Yeah If you need to setup win98 or winxp then you can also setup from a particular drive.For example,Steven says he can't get neither xp nor 98 to work...maybe he's overwriting his previous wps?I'm not sure but here's how to do it:
copy all the files from the folder for winxp/98 after exploring your cd and clean up the drive manually( from windows) after you have selected on which drive you will keep a backup of your operating system and from which drive you will delete/format your current operating system..(my idea is that,if Steven is REALLY having so many problems with floppy's or cd's he can try this method).Suppose,you are re-installing winxp and your current windows and its system files are in c drive.Get rid of some files from windows to recycle bin and then copy and paste all the files including setup.exe and any folder that might be needed for your setup process.Now restart your computer and take the xp boot cd out,keep pressing "f8" untill you get to see the command prompt or dos mode...remember that you must have nc5 or nortan commander for this.Open nc5 from there ( it's better if nc5 is in d drive and u are deleting windows from c drive ) , delete everything including empty directories and sub-directories ,use the " tab " key to change sides.
Good.Now open the winxp saved folder from d drive and find out "setup.exe" and run it...you will need to enter the cd key somewhere i can't remember...I think this method is better than directly overwriting everything from windows as it always keeps a backup always for you...

But if you are having problems with your cd reading,or the ability of the cd drive to read data from the disk,then I suggest that you should try another cd rom.

Thanks for the responses - I have tried other CD Roms. It is a brand new hard drive which has never had windows on it. I'm pretty new to all this stuff as this is my first attempt at building a PC.
It just doesn't seem to want to install anything on!

ok - you'll have to bear with me if i'm making no sense....
Here are the facts!
*I have a brand new system comprising of brand new components
*It has never had windows installed on it.
*This is what is happening when I try and install windows
*First 98....
I put in my 98 floppy startup disk and switch on.
It installs virtual drivers for my CD Rom
It starts to read CD then crashes. Once it did get me as far as the first setup screen yet i got a General Protection Fault (can't remember exactly what it said...)
*have also tried my other Cd Rom which does exactly the same thing.

*Then I tried XP
*I downloaded 6 x floppy startup disks from M/soft website on another PC.
*These sometime crash the system but worked once
*It gets as far as asking me where I want to put XP
*I select my hard drive and then (you guessed it) the system crashes!
*Incidently, the same startup disks worked fine and dandy on my old mans PC and XP was succesfully installed.

***I am unable to install any version of Windows!***

My BIOS recognises everything and states everything is OK.

My girlfriend is very bored of my meddling and would like her living room back to normal. I may throw the thing (the PC) out of the window shortly.

Any help would be extremely appreciated! Thanks Steve

1st, is there a reason you are using startup discs for XP? You can install straight from the CD if you set your bios as the 1st boot device..

Did you format the drive before you started .
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q255867

I downloaded the floppys for XP because I tried setting my BIOS to boot from CD Rom first but it wouldn't recognise the CD (the same CD that my dad installed on his PC which worked fine).
I formatted the Hard Drive first off.
I do not understand. I have 2 CD Rom (DVD and reader) both work fine.
Could it be my memory?

try updating your bios on the motherboard.
if it is an old mobo it might not let you boot without a mesdex driver.
win 98 se and XP both can boot from the cdrom.
do you have 2 ribbon cables plugged in?
one to harddrive one to cdrom?
or are they piggy backed?
also when it starts to boot do you see the HD and CD?

What about fdisk then a format try maybe doing a split partion,30gb main and 10gb for the spare....then you can transfer the cab files to the 10gb portion for installing,If you have tried the fdisk maybe try fdisk/mbr.Its old school technology that just might work.

:D

Steve, look at this detailed and illustrated tutorial written by jmcmtank. It explains how to build a computer and load the operating system (section 12). Don't quit now!

Hey thanks all you guys for all your help. I figured it out!
I have an AMD 2000 XP processor yet for some reason it kept showing as a 2600!! I failed to see this when PC kept doing the POST setup. I spied it when I tried it again and thought 'hmm thats strange!' So I went into my BIOS and slowed the clock speed down to the correct speed and it now shows as the correct processor! I loaded XP up and I now have a fully functional and quite speedy PC! How the hell it managed to overclock itself I'll never know. How the hell it never blew itself up by now I will also never know! Well, my living room is back to normal and the lady has quit moaning so all is well! Thanks once again for all your suggestions - it's been fun (if not frustrating) building this damn PC but I have learned loads more with it going wrong than I ever would've if it hadn't gone wrong - think theres some logic there? Cheers! Steve M

I rate this post a 5 out of 5 stars this is what its all about
I too have been there you can get desperately hostile in those situations I returned my motherboard back to compusa only to find out that the cd rom was bad