pc will not boot from boot devices

[vader3234]

pc          Gateway X500
os          xp


I was trying to reformat the hard drive, I put operating system in the drive and deleted the partition on the hard drive (Probably should not have) Now pc will not boot from any boot device(incl hard drive, either cdrom, or even floppy)  the reason for this is that when I deleted the partition it disabled all the boot devices including the hard drive.  My question, is how do I enable the boot devices or fix this problem
in general.

[Custom-IT]

You should be able to change the boot settings in your BIOS before any boot device is attempted...

The BIOS is usually entered by pressing either "F2" or the 'Del' key but it should tell you the correct key to press when you turn on your PC.

Set the boot device order to 1. CD ROM/DVD, 2. HDD and then boot from your Windows XP installation CD. Your computer should then boot from the CD. During the installation process, you will be asked where you want to install Windows and you should choose your HDD - the installation will see there is no available partition and will create on for you...

Hope this helps,

Mat