Reinstalling win98se after winxp pro

Can someone please help me? I tried to install win xp pro and the disk was messed up. I want to reinstall my win98se until I get a new copy of xp, but whenever I try it gives me an error loading operating systems message on start up, and if I use a boot disk, nothing happens at all. I have partitioned my hard drive and formatted using fat32. Now I can't use my comp at all and am stuck using an extremely old and slow comp. Thanks for taking the time to read this post.

 

What is the exact error, and when exactly, does it happen?
Have you tried booting to the CD?
Have you tried removing all partitions, and booting to the CD, and let the install process fdisk and format the drive?
Have you tried copying the CD to the hard drive, and installing from there?
Have you made the first partition active?

 

The error message is 'error loading operating system'. It happens if I put in the win98se cd without the boot up floppy. When I put it in with the floppy, no matter which option I pick nothing happens. I have not tried to remove all partitions and let the install process fdisk and format though. I have tried everything else. Thanks for the advice, I will try it asap.

 

After you run fdisk, you must reboot, then format with this command
format c: /s
This will format and make the drive bootable, but that is all it will do. Then rebuild the Master Boot Record by doing this command.
fdisk /mbr
It will appear to do nothing. Then take out the floppy and see if it boots. All you should get is a c: prompt, it will not be able to do much other that internal dos commands at this point, but you will know if it is working.

 

Thanks, I will try that too, since nothing else is working. Also, I am thinking about seeing if I can remove the hard drive from this computer, putting it into the other one, and copying winxp pro that way.