>>Are you sure the drive is good? What brand is it?
>
>I don't know what brand it is. The drive should be good because it worked before I touched it <g>.

The simplest way to install W2K from its CD is to boot from the CD. To do that, you need to configure the computer's boot section in its BIOS so that it will try to boot from CD before it tries to boot from the HD. For most white-box machines you press the Delete key at the appropriate moment during boot to enter the BIOS setup.

In the boot section you typically can specify 3 or 4 devices. Set the first one to be the floppy disk drive, the second to be your CD-ROM drive, the third to be the hard drive and probably leave the 4th (if present/available) blank.

Then reboot the system with no floppy disk in its drive and the W2K install CD in place. Hit a key to boot from CD when prompted, and follow the instructions.

W2K Setup has a basic partition manager. Use it to delete any partition you may have already set up, create a new one, then install W2K on it. Be sure to use NTFS, and if you can afford the time it's a good idea to NOT use the "quick format" option so the disk gets surface scanned at the outset.