DO NOT PREPARE THE HARD DISK IN ADVANCE! Just boot that diskette and remove all those partitions and follow the PICTURES at....
http://www.blackviper.com/Articles/OS/InstallXPHome/installxphome1.htm
Bob
I have a old IBM aptiva and the old hard drive went out. I bought a couple new hard drives off e-bay and installed one thinking that I could just put in my winxp cd and start it up and it would automatically install the operating system, no such luck. I get: insert system diskette and press enter key to reboot.
I have another compaq that is about the same age (350 to 400 mhz) and I was getting the same message on that one trying to do the same thing and I formatted a 3.5 floppy and put the system files on that disk and now when I start that one I get a message that it is starting win 98 and then it gives me an A prompt. I would like to get either one of these compters going. Any help would be appreciated

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