HP 740n wont run windows installer?

patddfan

hi, I have a major issue that has been plaguing me for almost 2 years now. whenever I start up my hp 740n PC, it says 'invalid system disk replace and press any key.' the reason it keeps telling me this is because i got a virus when windows xp was installed, so I tried to reformat the drive and restore windows xp on it. when i tried to run the windows xp setup from CD, it gets an error while loading from the CD, so I tried starting up with my windows 98SE CD. whenever I tried to install Windows 98SE, it is able to successfully complete checking the Partitions that currently exist on that machine, and then, when it tried to run windows setup, it says 'ms dos extender error' with a bunch of hex codes on the next two lines, and below it, I am returned to the windows 98 boot drive (A:\>) in DOS. in the BIOS settings, there isn't any way that I can actually get my machine to successfully be able to boot from anything other than a 'USB Zip' drive, CDRW, Network boot, or one of my two hard drives. what can I do to fix this issue? I don't have any of the restore disks for this machine... just Windows 98SE, 2000, ME, and XP setup CDs. I could try 2000, but I didn't want to run into more issues. thanks

gdea73

If it's got a floppy drive, make a floppy of CopyWipe and zero the disk (1 pass, no randomness). If that goes well, then go ahead and install an OS. If it fails, find a hard disk that works.