I NEED HELP!! just slapped together a new pc for the first time..

[rockgecko]

please someone help me!!! i'm stuck at the turn it on part and what do i install first? do i format the hard disk first with a boot disk from another pc?

 

[HappyPuppy]

Assuming you have turned it on, it posts and you can see what is on the monitor, boot from a floppy, fdisk and create a primary partition, reboot with floppy still in, type "format C: /s" without the " and from there I can't tell you much more without knowing what OS you're installing. If your boot disk has CD-ROM Drivers on it you can insert the OS CD, change to the CD drive (D: or whatever) and run setup.

 

[veryape]

All you really want to have installed at this point is your floppy or bootable cd, whichever you are using, a video card an obviously you need to have your monitor hooked up. Turn it on and see if you get a picture and if you do set it to boot whatever device you are booting, partition your hard drive if need be and go ahead and install your operating system. That is providing everything goes smoothly, then you should be able to handle installing the rest of your components.

 

[btvillarin]

I'm saying the following assuming you're not gonna split/partition your HD into sections, and use it as a whole instead.

Windows 98: I think that if you boot into a command prompt, you can type FDISK and be able to partition it. Just answer "yes" about the FAT32 question, and choose "Create primary partition". Answer "Yes" when it asks if you'd just like to use all the space possible. After this is done, and you shutdown and reboot, then use the CD to install Windows 98. (I think this is possible. If not, you can make a boot disk using this article: http://content.techweb.com/winmag/columns/explorer/1999/1025.htm

Windows 2000/XP: When you boot with the CD, just go through with the install. When it gets to the part about partitions, it'll ask you to choose the partition to install in. Choose the one that should be visible, and format it with NTFS (unless you're gonna dual-boot, which I won't go into). Then, continue as usual.

BTW, just out of curiosity, what's your computer consist of?