im trying to get this old closet beast up and running for a local member that had to sell his computer... i threw in a 20 gig drive, but cant get it booted with any of my CD'*...

i have tried, Windows 98, ME and 2000 and used my western digital hard drive setup disc

i keep getting the error:

NTLDR is missing

here are some pics
DSC06655.jpg
DSC06656.jpg
DSC06654.jpg

If that is the error you are getting, then you are not booting from the CD-ROM, but rather the hard disk... and that disk has/had a version of NT on it. You need to change default boot to be CD-ROM

Go to bootdisk.com, and make a Win 98 bootdisk
boot with it, fdisk, yes for large drive support, partition, reset, format C: and try after that. It should work.

And then after that.... better go ahead and load DOS 6.0.

PII?

if the bios is showing that the CD is the primary, then how do i switch it in this bios?

I think that he has already tried to boot the system with bootable CDs. I'm thinking that the system is not set up to boot from CD-ROM (probably doing an ALT-P for another page or two in the BIOS will reveal a boot order menu).

Do you agree?

It'* showing it as the primary IDE device, not the primary boot device. Look for an option in your BIOS called "Boot order", or something along those lines.

Doesn't matter if it is primary or secondary. What matters is the default boot order. If you ALT+P a couple of pages down, you will probably see a boot order menu.

thanks! brain fart

at the blue install screen now

That'* what I usually do. I go to CMOS, set the floppy as the primay boot device, and the cd-rom as the second. Then I create a 98 boot disk for the fdisk command, delete/create a new partition with large disk support, then reboot and begin with the XP (or whatever OS you have) cd.

It looks like with your version of CMOS there, you ALT-p for the next page to find the boot sequence.