Replaced hard drive. All installed Windows programs start up and others are gone. How do I reinstall. I have program disks for Win 98, Win xp home, win 2000 pro and a few others. There has been no problem to install these but this lap top is being a pain. is there some unknown button to push or sequence of digits needed? I want to give this away but I must get it operational first.

Hi

Transferring file from your computer to external hard drive is very easy, just copy and paste all the files you needed to the external hard drive.

Reinstalling Windows XP would be quite difficult. Make sure you have Windows XP installer CD and all the utility hardware driver of your computer e.g. Chipset driver, Sound driver, VGA driver, WAN driver, LAN driver and others. If you do not have the Utility drivers, just download the complete set of utility driver in the internet. Most of them are free to downloads.

Here is the procedure with video on how to reinstall the Windows XP operating system (step by step) http://www.fixya.com/support/r7410371-reinstall_windows_xp_or_installing_clean

Please rate and make a comment if you find this solution very helpful and might help others as well. Post more comments if you need more help.

Regards and thank you for using Fixya !

You cannot install 98 directly on your system slave drive, but there is a way to install it.

1) disconnect your primary drive
2) make your slave drive as primary.
3) install 98
4) Connect your actual primary drive again and start your system

XP records your mac id of your motherboard and 98 does not records, the other way is, you can install both the OPS on your one primary drive by creating different partitions, you will need to full format your drive first.

1) Full format your primary drive.
2) Create partitions.
3) Install 98.
4) Install XP in different drive of your same hard disk

You will be able to see both your OPS when you start your system.

NTLDR is short for NT loader – a program loaded from the hard drive boot sector that displays the Microsoft Windows NT startup menu and helps Microsoft Windows NT load. So when it goes missing for some reason, your windows cannot load.
Cause:
1. Computer is booting from a non-bootable source.
2. Computer hard disk drive is not properly setup in BIOS.
3. Corrupt NTLDR and/or NTDETECT.COM file.
4. Misconfiguration with the boot.ini file.
5. Attempting to upgrade from a Windows 95, 98, or ME computer that is using FAT32.
6. New hard disk drive being added.
7. Corrupt boot sector / master boot record.
8. Seriously corrupted version of Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
9. Loose or Faulty IDE/EIDE hard disk drive cable.
if there is attached drive ,remove the drive first before restarting the system if not then if you had access to another computer, copy the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM which is available from the recovery CD which comes with computer. If you do not have the recovery CD, its available on microsoft site or is available from another computer using the same Operating System (Windows XP ). The location may be C:\i386\ntldr C:\i386\ntdetect.com use a bootable disc to restart the computer (the Win XP bootable CD or Win 98 bootable CD worked). After entering MS DOS mode, copy these 2 files to the C drive in the proper location. After restart, then pressing F10 on start up (used for system recovery ), then start the repair of Windows via system recovery This will reinstalled all Windows drivers and system files, while preserving all data on your computer.

hi! there,set up exe. that was when your setting up win 98 you have to install that came from floppy disk before you can install win 98.there is an os win 98 in your system you have to delete that previous os before installing another win xp.restart ur computer. press F2 to open your bios set-up . then select bios set-up priority your cd-room drive second,your hard drive. last, quit and save set-up. and then your computer will restart. insert your cd windows xp then reinstall your window xp. delete the previous os then follow the set up on your window xp until you install your new window xp.

put in the windows 2000 or xp disk
98 is not supported by microsoft , youll have many problems online
but you need to format the hard drive , 20 gb is good
with the windows xp cd boot from it
you will see just one letter drive if more delete them and format just one drive, you can use the quick format , so the windows xp files will go on after that, but youll have 30 day trial

When you attempted to reinstall Xp did you answer to install on a new particion or fix and repair existing? Reparticion hard drive or you can download a program ferom one of the hard disk makers such asWestern digital , reformatt the whole drive with that then reinstall windows. 

hi harold what operating system do you have?

it seems that a reinstall is probably the best , hope you have your data on a seperate partition or hard disk, and recent backups?

you can set the partitions in f-disk on the start up disk of windows 98, reset partitions to 32, format c: drive, take out disk and put in windows 98 cd. and restart computer. your done. windows 98 cd will install. your up and running. please give me a fixya rateing. Thanks farren

insert a windows cd...boot from it and format the drive.

try formating the drive using fdisk in fat32, you can find this program in windows 98/98se and Me them try instaling windows xp