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