Before you disassembled it, could this PC boot up at all? Does its power supply smell like burnt plastic?

It's probably actually a Windows 98 or Windows NT computer because the Pentium III product launch took place in 1999. If you can get the PC working again, then I'd recommend Windows 98 for this PC.

A hard drive from a Windows Vista PC is probably a SATA hard drive. Your motherboard does not have SATA ports. Do you have the PC's original PATA hard drive?

Those plastic things preventing the CPU from being removed are the CPU retention bracket and its pegs. These are not optional parts. If you only destroyed the plastic pegs, then you can replace them cheaply. Some small machine screws & nyloc nuts from a hardware store will do the trick. Get some nylon washers too to prevent the nuts from causing a short circuit. On the other hand, if you destroyed the whole bracket, then you'll need to order a replacement from the internet.

it boot up

How did you mess up the installation? You have to be more specific and in-depth with what you did, don't just reply with three words 🤣.
You said that you messed up while trying to install Windows 95, what errors or messages came up?
If you are using a SATA HDD (hard drive), then you need to change the IDE mode to legacy mode in order to install Win 98.
What is the capacity of your HDD btw? If Windows 98 still won't install, using fdisk from a Windows ME boot-disk may be necessary.

i don't have the windows 95 floppy disk, just the cd, so i used the windows 98 installation to format the hard drive, however, i acedently interupeted the process and now it wont work.

Lock yourself in a room with the computer until you figure it out on your own.

I'm serious. This is how I learned.

There's no magic formula here that only the people on VOGONS know. If you don't get the experience you need you'll keep coming back here with basic questions and never get anywhere.

jetcold0 wrote:

i don't have the windows 95 floppy disk, just the cd, so i used the windows 98 installation to format the hard drive, however, i acedently interupeted the process and now it wont work.

if this is the case, then you can fix it.
what size is the hdd?
like above, i assume its a sata drive in legacy mode.
to be safe, make sure the partition isnt larger than about 120GB. this may require using fdisk to delete and recreate the partition.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Lock yourself in a room with the computer until you figure it out on your own.

I'm serious. This is how I learned.

There's no magic formula here that only the people on VOGONS know. If you don't get the experience you need you'll keep coming back here with basic questions and never get anywhere.

Exactly. You said it really well. If you aren't willing to sit down and learn something yourself properly, or at all, then you won't get what you want (unless you pay someone to do it for you).
Hard work is hard work, doesn't mean that you can't get help from other people, but thinking for yourself, being willing to learn, having initiative, and persistence will get you much further in the end.
I recently got a Pentium 4 computer to run Windows 98 flawlessly, it was such a rewarding experience to be able to get everything working properly. Now I can play all of my retro games! 😁

jetcold0 wrote:

i don't have the windows 95 floppy disk, just the cd, so i used the windows 98 installation to format the hard drive, however, i acedently interupeted the process and now it wont work.

Then format the hard drive and start again

*moved to Marvin::Software*

Bruh you need another computer that has a floppy drive or one of those USB floppy drives so you can make boot disks.

I really don't understand the problem though boot the computer with the 98 bootdisk. use FDISK and delete all the partitions and create a new one. Reboot with the Floppy and run Format. Run setup from the drive letter that the Bootdisk assigns the CD drive. Installing windows is so easy. So you either are not telling us the whole story or you never installed windows any version before.

Should be even easier then that! GP7-450 would support booting of CD. Just install Win98, at last till you get the hang of these things

Boot off the Win98 CD
Select Start computer with CD support.
at the dos prompt type fdisk
Select Yes to enabling large disk support
Delete any existing partitions
Create Primary partition, for now accept all defaults.
Reboot and continue the install as per this guide
http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win98/install … dexfullpage.htm

Only thing I can think of is fdisk is pretty bad at deleting NTFS partitions. in which case boot off a WinXP CD or later, run setup and delete all existing partitions.
Then reboot with the Win98 CD