i recently built another computer using a pentium II motherboard and processor that a friend gave me. i wanted to use the hard drive from the older computer i had so went about fixing/plugging it in. it already had win 2k on it and when i turn on the machine i get 'disk read error, ctrl, alt, del to restart'. i tried to boot from cd but this method did not seem to work. i also put in a windows 98 recovery disk (floppy) so i could choose option to go to dos. on doing this it will not let me change to drive c:. yet in BIOS my hard drive can be seen quite clearly.
can anyone please help?

Last part first - It's likely that the 2k installation was on an NTFS filesystem. W98 cannot underrstand an NT file layout so it will claim the drive is buggered or some tech term.

Your BIOS is not concerned with what filesystem your drive uses, or even wether your drive can actually store any filles. All it does is check out the physical existance and base characteristics of the drive.So your BIOS will check the drive out as O K if it powers up and sends the expected responses back to the BIOS.

how can i get my HD working in this machine?

As I said 98 cannot see an NTFS file system.

First we should check it is an NTFS partition, go here:
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm

download the boot disk and see if you can read the disk

its ok i managed to solve it, just re-installed win2k with fat32 then re-installed 98 from there. thanks for your help anyway.

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