Have a Dell Inspiron 2500 that had a 10 GB hard drive go south. I need 6
more months from it and it is worthwhile to install a new hard drive and
reinstall ME and programs.

I go into setup and get told that "An error was detected while formatting
the primary hard drive partition".

My drive was unformatted and unpartitioned, I am told to let Windows do all
that.

How do I do install?

Thanks!!!