Please could you tell me if it is possible to install windows 98 using dos and if so how do you do it. Also will i need a start up disc to do this or not. If this is not possible is there another way of installing windows 98 without a start up disc. If possible why you are answering this question could you tell me how to upgrade to xp, What extras do i require if any and how do i do it. Any help will be appreciated.

Hello. Welcome to D-A-L.

If your machine has a (BIOS recognized) ATAPI CDROM drive, all you need to do is ensure the machine is set to boot from the floppy drive first, and boot with a 98 or 98SE boot disk.

Note that the bootdisk image file is a self extracting file and needs to be executed from Windows in order to create the actual startup diskette.

This will place you at a A:\> DOS prompt. When the machine is booting, watch for the drive letter assigned to your CDROM drive. (Near the end of the boot process.) Then insert the 98 CD into your CDROM, and type in x:\setup. (Where x: is the assigned CDROM drive letter.)

Prior to installing, if you wish to format the drive to clear the hard disk, or partition it differently, the tools are available on this boot disk.

To see if your machine is capable of running XP, there's information here and here.
(You will need to have a version of Windows installed to utilize the above links.)

If you need further assistance, please post the type/make/model number of the machine. If it's a laptop which can only use the floppy drive OR the CDROM drive at one time, please post this information as the steps invloved are a bit more complex. Also please post back to let us know if this helped you.