Startup problems

[Thorax]

I got a free computer from a friend who said it had start up problems. So I took it home, set it up, and tried turning it on. It comes on, shows a Dell screen for half a second, then tells me to insert boot diskette into floppy drive 1. I don't have a boot diskette. And I'm not even sure what OS it's running. The sticker on the side says it runs ME, but he could have upgraded it to 2000 or XP. I doubt it's XP because he never had an XP computer, so it's either ME or 2000. Can anyone help?

[robin1989]

insert an xp disk and boot from xp them just do a fresh install of xp - should sort it out

[Thorax]

Ok, thanks. I thought you might be able to do that but I wasn't sure.

EDIT: I just tried it and it doesn't work. The only thing I can get into is the POST menu. If I just turn on the computer, it comes up with the error.

[P3nnyw1se]

did you set the bios to boot off of CD first then HD and Floppy?

[Thorax]

No, I set it to HD then CD. And it doesn't say "CDROM". Insted it says "ATAPI CDROM". What's the difference?

P.S. When I said POST, I meant BIOS. Sorry.

[P3nnyw1se]

same thing, different driver, that's all

[Skullmaster]

yep, let us know if that dosent work.

[Thorax]

It didn't. I replaced the original CD drive with a DVD drive that I was going to use and tried it. It didn't work either. I then added a different CD drive to see if that would work, but it didn't. I think it's a problem with the HD, so I was looking at it and noticed it's max capacity is 389 MB or something odd like that. I think I'm just going to replace it with a different HD and try that.

EDIT: I replaced the HD and it's working now. I took a look at the old one and it has a 40 GB max Who knew? Now I need to know how to wipe the drive and install XP (Which I kinda know how to do the latter).

EDIT2: I wiped the smaller of the 2 drives I have and tried installing XP on it. It's not working. Anyone know how I can get it to work?