Thank you Mr Keets I know the various ways of installing windows from CD or using boot disk.
I am begining to suspect it was indeed a win 95 boot disk I had a similar thing happen as you describe a few years ago,I just want to return the hard disk to the size it should be then format it, install windows 98 then ugrade it with the XP disk which is what I did with my own puter no probs
I normally have a few win 98 boot disks with the format command one em but sods law the only one I can find does not have the dos command format,just the fdisk command,
Nowts simple.
Panic over,just got a call from me pa,l he finaly managed to get XP loaded and running at 2 am,one shall go over and load all his drivers then all we have to do is get his broadband up and running