cd appears to read but as i said above cant highlight it in bios to set on auto just says installed and floppy the light just stays on all the time and bios says disabled or 3 1/2 when its disabled the light doesnt come on when bios is set to 3 1/2 the light just stays on all the time in floopy drive
so not sure what either of these are actully dioing thats why i wondered if there is anyway to boot from my external usb cd/dvd drive

Try disconnecting the floppy drive untill you get it set up.. Also do you have the flopy installed correctly? There finicky somtimes when it comes to the way thier IDE cable is either upside down or right side up!!

this is on a laptop and everything seemed fine until upgrade have disabled floppy in bios restarted it cd rom flashes but no boot screen andstill just a flashing cursor
is it possible a hard drive failure or boot sector problem

update
just unplugged hard drive and restarted whilst unplugged shutdown plugged back in and now windows is preparing installation
i suspect when windows tries to install there will be hard drive failure will update again if this is hard drive failure then it will the 2nd fujitsu 30gb hard drive failure in three years!! wont replace with another fujitsu thats for sure

right got end of prep to install wijndows reading cd rom all the time next stage installing windows approx 3/4 of the way through shutdown restarted installing windows 56 mins 49mins left installing network 46 mins performing configuration this has all been done with floppy disabled in bios!!now updated and working thanks for that advice and to all who helped

Glad it is working for ya