Firstly, have you checked that the Windows CD that you have isn't already bootable - some are. Go into the BIOS and make your CD the first bootable device.

If that doesn't work, sadly it isn't as easy as downloading a disk. Do you know how to create .iso disks??

Windows 98 Second Edition is a bootable CD, The earlier edition is not bootable.

OK folks... an update... I think this sounds like it could be a motherboard, cd rom AND/OR Hard drive problem at the same time...

Just to let you know that since the last email I managed to get 6 Win XP start up disks.. They still never managed to install anything because they could not find a driver for the CD Rom, (the same problem I've been having with the Win 98 boot disks) Although the hard drive malfunctioned, which got me into this situation into the first place.. (and I think that thats the problem) However I've managed to format the drive and I'm wondering whether replacing the new hard drive would make a difference to being able to install either Win Xp or Win 98.Becaue the computer can't recognise the CD rom, I'm now wondering whether it could be a faulty motherboard, AND/OR a faulty hardrive or even something in the Bios??? Is that possible- something not set right in the bios?
Bare in mind that the computer does recognise the CD rom if I change it to the first boot device, but won't load in fully.. it gives me an error... (blue screen) but like i said, it isn't recognised if I try to boot by floppy. This is new to me....

You see, every computer I've ever formatted and re-installed an Operating system- I've done a few, Is usually as simple as either putting a Cd in the Cd drive, or putting a floppy in the floppy drive and telling the Bios to boot from floppy or CD... And you'd probably agree with me... you might have to add a driver and change the config.sys file...
There is obviously something wrong here....

So, If there is anything else you can think of that I haven't tried please share it with me and I'll try it out...

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I telephoned support and they really didn't seem to know how to solve the problem,
One guy told me that there is some kind of code written into the BIOS which means that the computer can only be run from a specific CD realting to the BIOS.... This is the first time I have heard of this.. Is that possible?
He said it was for windows copyright reasons... Why would they do this?

And if this is possible, Can I reset the code in the BIOS, and if so how?

All I can say is welcome to the world of computers.

I think the support guy that you phoned is trying to make up excuses, I have never heard of having to "Flash the BIOS". You used to have to do that in the old days so that the BIOS could recognise a newer type of hard drive (e.g 40Gig), I have never had to do that to get a CD-ROM drive working.

Then again you say you can boot off the Windows CD but it blue screens you. This means that the BIOS is detecting the CD-ROM so there shouldn't be any need to Flash the BIOS.

Some things for you to check.
Firstly go into the BIOS and check under Standard CMOS and see whether it has detected the Hard drive and Cdrom. (If so write down the names of both and post them on this forum for me)

Make sure that the jumper settings on both the Hard-Drive and CDROM are set correctly. I would have the hard drive set to Master and the CDROM set to slave.
Try running them on the same IDE cable to begin with, if it doesn't work then run the hard drive on the Primary IDE and the CDROM on the secondary IDE.
As a troubleshooting thing, remove any device that you do not need for now. E.g sound card/ network card e.t.c
Just have the basics so that you can try pin-point were the problem is.
Do you have easy access to another CDROM drive, for example you could take the one out of your home machine and try it, see if it works. If it does you could load up Windows and once everything is installed, try put the other drive back in and see if it works.
Could you also check the model number of the CDROM drive and post it here so I can look it up and see whether there are any known issues with it.(should be on the sticker on top of the CDROM drive)