I bought an old computer off a friend and then i reformated the harddrive and when i try to put windows back on all its says is please remove disk or other media. can someone please help? i have only a windows 98 cd

Have you checked there's no disk in the floppy disk drive? If there is, remove it and replace it with a Windows 98 startup floppy and re-boot. When the menu appears, select "Start Computer with CD-ROM support" and press [ENTER]. Watch the screen cos it will tell you which letter has been assigned to the CD-ROM drive. Pop in the Win98 CD, change to CD drive by typing D: (or whatever letter you saw on-screen for the CD drive). Now type SETUP and press [ENTER]. The installation should begin.

Nofear911, are you sure it doesn't say "Please INSERT bootable disk or other media"? In any case, Pip22's advice is the way to get your Windows 98 install going.

umm i dont have a floppy drive in at the monment because it always says floppy drive error (40) and i can get it to work does any1 know how 2 fix it?

To boot your PC from the Windows 98 CDROM, I've assumed that your PC's BIOS is set to enable CDROM booting. Maybe it isn't. To check the setting, go into the BIOS Setup screen (which you normally do by pressing F2 or Delete within the first couple of seconds of switching on the PC - it should tell you on the screen) and look for the Boot Device Order or Priority. Make sure that the CDROM drive is listed before the hard disk.

If that doesn't work, you'll need to get the floppy drive working. It could be one of several faults:

1. Dead floppy drive (possible)
2. Dead ribbon cable (possible)
3. Ribbon cable loose or fitted incorrectly (likely)
4. Faulty motherboard (unlikely).

To check the ribbon cable:

a) Open the PC case (with it switched off obviously) and inspect the flat grey data cable that joins the floppy drive to the motherboard;
b) Confirm that the red stripe on one edge of the cable (which can be rather feint on old systems) is pointing towards the power connector on the floppy drive end and towards the centre of the motherboard on the motherboard connector end. If either of those sockets are labelled to indicate which pin is pin number 1, then that's a double-check - the red stripe should be on the pin 1 side.
c) Make sure the end of the cable with the slits in it is at the floppy drive end, not the motherboard end.
d) If it all looks OK, take the cable out of the PC, blow into the connectors to remove any dust (or wipe it off with a damp bit of kitchen towel if the dust has built up into thicker lumps) and then refit it securely, checking that you follow those rules described above. Don't blow all the dust around inside the PC!

Let us know how you get on

ok thanks i got a floppy drive working and got it set up but once it goes into the first part of setup and gets to 100% a message pops saying invalid command su995035???

See if this helps.

thanks but i got up to this part . At the command prompt, type the following commands, pressing ENTER after each command:
cd\windows
ren setver.exe setver.old

I typed it like this a:>cd\windows and a:\>ren setver.exe setver.old
and that didnt work so then i tried instead of a:\> c:\> and it still didnt work did i type the right thing?

If you've booted with a floppy (apparently so) change your operating environment to the hard disk. From the A:\> prompt, type; (Enter after each command)

c:

cd windows

ren setver.exe setver.old

dir setver.*

and you should see the setver.old file. Then proceed to extract a new copy from the CD as instructed.

ok here is what happens now

a:\>c:

c:\>cd windows

c:\>ren setver.exe setver.old
file not found-setver.exe