The trouble is the XP pro disk I have is not bootable, ie if I select boot from CD in bios it will not boot from the CD,it is meant to update a machine that already has a operating system,in my case windows 98SE.
If you have a brand new hard disk,ie unformated, you change the boot sequence from boot from Hard Disk to boot from CD in bios, the puter boots up happily from the Windows 98se CD,sees a unformated disk and offers to format same for you,if it sees a disk that is already formated with a existing operating system it does not,it is different from the dos based rescue disk,where one simply used the dos command "Format",and it did not matter what was on the disk it went ahead and formated the disk I don't have that option.
Thanks for the help one shall give it a go tomorrow.
