I bought a new computer (633mhz, celeron) to replace my extremely outdated 133mhz pentium, but it has no OS.  I thought an xcopy was my answer.
Heres what I did:
1)  The new computer had only one connector on the ribbon cable, so I put the old cable in the new machine with the old drive, set the jumpers to make the new one a slave connected it to the ribbon cable, borrowed a power supply from the CD burner and turned it on.
2)  I checked BIOS setup to make sure it recognized both drives.
NOTE:  WIN98 will only start in safe mode on the new machine, so I am working in safe mode.  (That's next after I get it running)
3)  I got a dos window and formatted (with the /s switch) the new drive, then xcopied everything (with all the correct switches) to the new drive.  Eve
rything looked great.
4)  I turned on the machine (minus the old hard drive, with the new one jumpered for master)
5)  It asked for the command.com location.  It would not accept it, and asked for it again - repeatedly.
6)  I turned it off and attempted another restart.  The BIOS says the new drive is the right size, but the max storage is way low.  I can't get that to change, and the computer still will not start up.
7)  I put the old drive back in, jumpered the new one back to slave and started in safe mode again.  The machine doesn't recognize the new drive at all now, except in BIOS setup, where it again shows the right size, but way low on the max storage.
8)  I attempted another format, and it tells me that there is no disk in the drive (as if it is looking for a floppy).
9)  I attempted a format in windows and it says there's nothing there, even though there is a d:\ listed in explorer and my computer.  It did give a
n error box stating equipment connected to the system is not operating properly.  (Oh, really?)  A right click to properties tells me there are no bytes for d:\

So what is it that I'm doing wrong? The CD and the CD writer's ribbon and power cables are unplugged.  (There was not an extra power connector for the new drive, and in safe mode the CD is not accessible anyway)  In BIOS, the old drive is set as primary master and the new one as primary slave, with no CD at all.    The old hard drive is HP 1.6GB, the new one E-Machines 20GB.

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