when you boot the floppy should light for a few seconds (accessing it for boot record) then turn off, unless a boot disk is in there. what WAS the message exactly that you had (error message???) Also, please explain a little more on what you mean?? Example:
it recently broke and a boot file got deleted so i cant start up, also the disk the disk drive broke before that, and i bought a new one for some reason the computer will not pick up that I have installed
are you saying this...
1. You're first HDD broke (was having disk read or i/o errors or something, not sure since you didn't specify) and that led you to believe a bad HDD
2. Now you have got this new one to replace the above HDD that was bad and you are getting no o/s detected errors, right? I hope you ARE using a boot disk and not trying to boot from the HDD, let us know exactly how you ARE booting... via cd or floppy??
3. If by floppy are you getting a non system disk error? If by cd, do you HAVE a floppy in the drive by accident (maybe a non system disk), in other words, make sure it has the needed system files.
4. OR are you able to BOOT off of the floppy, but the problem is you dont have the DOS CDROM DRIVERS, so you are sitting at Dos, with nothing to do because you can't start the installation process on the new replacement drive because it doesn't recognize the CD (this is what I think you mean, but again you haven't given details)