Use a floppy boot disk with the following utilities:
himem.sys
emm386.exe
fdisk.exe (or fdisk.com)
format.com
sys.com
in addition to the CDROM drivers and personal favourite edittor, etc. Your autoexec.bat and config.sys should load XMS (himem.sys), dos=high,umb, EMS (emm386.exe noems), and the CDROM drivers.
You use FDISK to remove all partitions from the drive and assign new ones, then FORMAT to prepare them for OS install (the format of your first (primary boot) partition should include /S to include room for system files) Then you install your OS.
If this is in regards to Win9x, copy the entire contents of the CD to the hard drive by including
xcopy*.*
for the DOS version on the boot floppy and using
xcopy cdrom drive letter: c:\wininst /s /e
to copy the complete directory structure to the hard drive. Then install from that copy. The copy is best placed on a partition other than the boot partition.