BleepingComputer.com: Upgrading from 98 to xp

I got a dell pc from a freind with windows 2000 and I had a gateway pc that came with widows 98. I Installed the gateway restoration kit and the software that came with the gateway.It has been working just fine for what I needed. But now that the 98 is unsupported I needed to up grade to at least xp. So my freind gave me a windows xp pro w/ service pack 2 disk w/ the code numbers . I stuck it into the cd drive and It does'nt do any thing but put up this stupid flashlight that can't find it's way and my curser freezes. I have tried to boot up in safe mode nothing. what do I do? I would appreciate any help , and if not this computer is going swimming real soon. Thx

You could have a read of a similar thing here whilst waiting, it may help.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic258295.html

Hey, Thanx for tour reply. I got to the point where the computer was supposed to say,press any key to boot from CD hit any key to proceed.and It did'nt do that it said to place diskette into drive a:/ . then I ctrl alt deleted and hit del. and it took me back to where I was.So I checked to make sure that the disk drive was still running first before the hard drive and that the right master or slave connection was chosen. I tried a whole bunch of different combo's and nothing. The computer is a dell dimention l 933 r but the 2 256 mb memory sticks and the video card came from my old gateway. Hell it did'nt matter anyway they were built the same year. So do I punt this thing into the lake or WHAT ?

Thx again Chuck,

This post has been edited by Inspector1: 25 October 2009 - 01:06 PM

Did you go into the BIOS and change the first boot device to the CD drive and not the A: drive?

yes I did , and I put in this order cd drive,Ide-hdd, armd-hdd,armd-fdd