No operating system left(formatted) upgrade xp won't load

Yep. Windows XP Upgrade is merely an upgrade. You need to have an operating system already installed on the hard drive to upgrade to Windows XP. Therefore you must first install Windows 98, Windows ME or Windows 2000 before you can use your Windows XP Upgrade disk.

If you cannot find the install disks of one of those previous versions of Windows then you cannot use Windows XP Upgrade. You must purchase a full version of Windows XP which is the full operating system whether it is OEM or retail. OEM costs less, but every time you want to install you must call Microsoft. OEM versions are basically for commericial system builders (i.e. resale).

For most people at this point in time it is not worth buying Windows XP since Windows 7 has just been released and only cost a few dollars more. Under the new licensing terms for Windows 7 users are basically discouraged from buying OEM versions of Windows 7. Microsoft does not provide support for systems with OEM operating system installed. It is up to the system builder to provide such tech support.

But can u use a blank drive and put ntldr, ntdetect.com, Boot.ini from a running system and build off of that?, I have tried this but I a Linux system that don't want to go away because the Windows repair doesn't see this as a valid system. Logic says (from books I read) that if you build the core an upgrade should run off of this it this correct or fanasty?  

FWIW, you can install Windows XP from scratch with a Windows XP Upgrade CD. You just need a CD with a previous version of Windows.

Grumpy is right... you need a Win 9x or 2K CD. During the setup process, XP will prompt you to insert one of those CDs into the drive. Once it verifies the disc, installation will continue.

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1) Ahh! but here is the problem, The Window 98SE disk I had was broken, so no go, but what I was told was I could get a current version of a running edition of XP and retrieve NTLDR, NTdetect.Com & BOOT.INI and make a boot disk and install on the hard drive and this would at least boot it, and from there I could run the Upgrade Disk. Does this sound credible to you?.......

2)But new problem has cropped up... I installed Linux Fredora on drive and I have trouble trying to get it off. because what I think is that partition programs I am using are Windows based an I am receiving "Invalid Media" when trying to repartition this to try the above method....... any suggestions

It seems that Fedora won't run right because of the Intel chipset I have installed(video)