It's ok folks gorrit sussed, the disk had two partitions,one partition 3 gig had the HP recovery on it I removed the partition when I fdiske it and created a new partition it made the 3gig bit the primary.
err negative BNT,I install XP by putting the newly formated disk with win 98SE on it in the machine as master and boot the from the upgrade disk,and it does its ugrade bit,done it many times now no probs.
Thanks anyway,if I have anymore probs one shall return.
