Help to set-up an old pc

**JRR** · March 28, 2010, 11:44 AM

hi everyone, i need some help , i have been collecting second hand pc's that nobody wants so i can practice building pc's, ive go this pc that works but it came with no hard drive so i decided to put a hard drive from one of my old pc's in it (the opperating system is windows ME) i turn it on and it comes to a black screen with white writing and says that disk failure and to insert system disk, i dont have a disk for the windoms ME opperating system all i have is a compaq disk (that came with my old pc) which is labled recovery disk.
so what do i do , how can i get this pc into windows, the opperating system it was on before was windows xp but as is said i dont have the hard drive for it.
help please
thanks for any replies

**JRR** · March 28, 2010, 01:10 PM

right , i changed around some cables because i found they were linked up wrong and i get i different message "missing opperating system" i have windows ME installed on that hard drive so how do i get it to work with this pc which has no hard drive ?
thanks for any replies

**JRR** · March 29, 2010, 09:46 AM

no-one has any ideas?

**Freddie** · March 29, 2010, 09:50 AM

I would save the stress of pulling my hair trying to fix it and would make the PC a Linux based system at least that you can find out if the all the hardware works or not.

**JRR** · March 29, 2010, 12:39 PM

thanks for the reply , how would i go about making a linux based system?

**Freddie** · March 29, 2010, 12:58 PM

Originally Posted by caius_titus_ceasar

thanks for the reply , how would i go about making a linux based system?

It's actually quite easy download and burn this .iso to a DVD pop it in the disc drive of the PC you want to load it to, shut it down. Turn it back on go into the BIOS and change the boot order to boot from the DVD drive first, save and reboot and let the disc take care of the rest. Once you have Linux up and running you can always install Windows back onto to it latter if you want.