Back to the drawing board chaps.
I've tried creating a floppy bootdisk and then copying those files (i.e. Autoexec & command.com etc) to my defunct hard-drive. I also copiedt he WIn2K setup CD to that drive hoping I'd get a C:> prompt and then be able to run setup.exe.
Of course that would be simple and of course life aint like that!!!!!
The drive would not boot up and I just got another annoying error message.
Then tried getting the CD-ROM drivers for the CD drive in the hope I could get my Win2K setup CD to boot from DOS. The only drivers available on the net will not run from DOS but have to be run from within Windows so that's a non-starter too.
Tried the partial install of Win2K by putting the drive in my good machine as a 'slave' and all I've managed to do is now get a prompt on my good drive when I fire up my machine asking which OS I want to run (XP or Win2K)
Not sure what you meant when you said 'run the first part of the install' Paul as it was either install or don't. I did install Win2K on the 'D' slave drive but it's obviously written files to my C: on this good machine as I can't boot the drive up in the defunct machine and get the twin O/S question on this XP Pro machine.
Runing out of options and patience now.....as my avatar is kicking in....!!!
Is here anything I can do to get this frickin PC up and running.
I know it's easy to buy a cheap PC off Ebay nowadays but buying anything aint an option for me unfortunately.
Thanks once again for any help offered.
Guy