Hello, This is a combination of software and hardware, but I think maybe the hardware part comes first. Please bear with me as I set the stage :) I've had a PII sitting here silent for about a year and every once in a while I get enthused to try to do stuff with it. It was what I used until I got my current PIII, and was running Windows 98se as the OS. Today, I ran into some trouble...no OS detected...so I tried a boot using the OS cd. The bad news is, that didn't work; the good news is, I haven't blown myself up yet. (This url was handy, so I'm using it as a reference to begin this plea for help) <http://www.everythingcomputers.com/pc_startup_trouble.htm> "Another common startup troubleshooting technique is to take advantage of the Step-by-Step Confirmation mode that Windows also offers you when you use F8 to boot your machine. In step-by-step mode, Windows asks you before it loads certain programs called for in your startup files. The idea is that by loading files one at a time, you can more quickly tell what's causing the problem. Basically, you say Yes to each prompt until your machine freezes and you'll learn the culprit. Note that this mode processes the entire Registry at once, however, so if the problem is a particular file called for in the Registry, this method won't tell you which one it is." I did this until the step-by-step said Windows couldn't install because it couldn't detect a hard disk, or the hard disk isn't functioning correctly or that it needs special drivers. Looking inside the tower, I can see the hard disk and a bunch of cables. The disk is cabled with the motherboard and the floppy drive and the cd drive. I don't know how to tell if the hipbone is connected to the thighbone... How do I tell if the hard drive is doing what it's supposed to do? I thought that if there's no hard disk, DOS wouldn't work, and DOS does appear on the monitor. Anyway, isn't BIOS on the hard disk, and if I'm booting to BIOS, doesn't that mean there's a hard disk? Actually, I'd like to use this troubled computer as a thingie for Apache and PHP and all that stuff, and not use windows on it, but I'm now lost in the terminology of what I should do next. Thanks very much for any help! cheers, Diane Visit our website regularly for FAQs, articles, how-to's, tech tips and much more http://freepctech.com