Don’t know what I said that was pirated.

I am not interested in installing windows 10.

I don’t understand most of what you say, especially all the initials.

Please don’t write me any more.

I am obviously too ignorant to post on this forum so I won’t be back.

@speedstep and @savvy2 - OBVIOUSLY I DIDN'T KNOW THE ITEM I LINKED WAS PIRATED, OR ALLEGEDLY PIRATED, AND LINK WAS REMOVED.

I don’t believe I said that because I never had occasion to do so.

sorry you got bogged down in Initials, they are actual abreactions. or acronyms.

or as some say buzzzz words,  all technology has this language, for sure even your doctor and in Latin, OMG.

HDD = hard disks drive, or SSD solid stated drive,
DISK = has mast meanings, HUGE< and must have 2nd word for anyone to know it or in CONTEXT.

CPU, the PCs processors yours is 13 years old. (Core2, Celeron) only the most newest CORE2 CPU runs w10-32 bit. so upgrades are impossible above w7 not knowing your EXACT CPU, model and stepping version. OK>

Central Processing unit,  this PC came with 512MB of ram (some did) and w10 will not load with that,ever.

Format?  the HDD is formatted many ways,  (Linux formats are not like windows, unless great care is done)

DVD , has many forms not just one, it has DVD-ROM (made by machine like you see at Walmart for Movies)

DVD-R recordable or DVD+R  ,  many DVD drives can not read this format, (the R means recorded at home)

CDrom, (machine made in huge volumes) like Walmart CDDA music disks or old XP installers from dell or MS.
CD-r like DVD-r  and again the R means recordable, and many a DRIVE can not handle this media for sure drive not supporting it, or weak or bad or media old. 13 years old is very very old.

DRIVE< the CD or DVD drive is the box that does it all, called  DRIVE< it spins the disk and reads the disk.

DRIVE can be a HDD or SSD, too, and is box with all that inside,magic,

USD boots,  all PCs 10 years old do this. 13yo is iffy but that video I posted tells you it works.

this  PC , to use USB one must go into BIOS and turn on USB ports all, and set them to boot first in ORDER.

seen as BOOT ORDER, first. of using DVD to boot set order to DVD.

The video posted at 10 seconds  in shows boot sequence can be also USB or CD rom.

Then same video , enable all SATA ports in this PC.

turn on SMART monitoring next.

at sata operation, set autodetect,. AHCI, (or legacy if that fails)

at video Integrated NIC< set it to ON and never set it to ON /PXE EVER> you never want it to boot to PXE and fail you will. if PXE is enabled !!!

NEXT is USB controller in the video,, are you watching it?

set this to  ON, do not pick NO BOOT or USB boots will be DEAD.

USB quad and DUAL and front must be ON,  or they will BE DEAD.

all PCI slots ACTIVE.

WAY DOWN, TURN OFF TPM. (THIS IS super old , class 1?UEFI JUNK) OFF. FOR SURE.

DO NOT SET BIOS PASSWORDS.

that is about it,

learn 1 thing, how to turn on all PORTs, and how to set boot order and learn how to boot DVD and USB installer sticks. (USB sticks means,  USB thumb drives, memory sticks, or as called no uDISK)

learn that HP PCs are not DELL and no DELL has HP BIOS nor does any HP have DELL BIOS, EVER>

you must learn both to be effective in your work as a tech.

BIOS is one of the most complex topics on Computers and is not standardized at ALL.

and the makers do not document BIOS, thus my posting of the wonder video of all BIOS SETTINGS just THIS PC.

"will not read linux,"

what does that mean, tell what you mean by  that statement. (tell you you did that?

windows, OS, can not read LINUX formatted disks of most kinds,  LINUX is not WINDOWS. (fat32 can share)

did you mean you are running, windows, and you inserted a Linux install DVD, and windows, explorer can not see the disk,  that is normal and at linux web site (1000 exist non stated by you) the tell you to boot the DVD

only that. and you need to erase the HDD first, or linux will not like what it sees there. ok>?

if only we can see what is in hand and what you did with linux something.

good luck to you.

  because it is not NTFS 

no that is not what it told you, sorry, it told you , that UEFI NTSF is there and you are trying to break a UEFI safe  disk HDD.

the cure is only one , erase the HDD, then install W10

learn this , UEFI protects the owner of the HDD< from others reading it  or using it on an alien PC.

it is also protected at the W10 install level too,  Setup.exe. the installers sees you attacking a locked UEFI set of partitions and that is not legal now. (new rules)

erase the drive first ( this comments you have all data backed up,  "BASICS")

hAfter my first post I got 3 or 4 posts, one every couple of hours from a Dell robot asking for details on my computer. I could not figure out how to reply as none of the buttons got me anywhere useful. I thought it was part of the thread so I finally posted it there. What I got was a notice that it was no longer under warranty, even though I never mentioned expecting that jt was. I also got a lot of flak from you guys. Is that the pirated material you are talking about?

OK. command prompt is not DOD, it is only analagous and just looks like it. I am not allowed to get to it on a library computer.

Thank you for your post.

As of now, I accept that the disks are probably not top notch even if they only work sometimes. The DVD player seems to be a generic model commonly used in refurbishes. so definitely not top notch. Not thrilled with the corrupted Windows 7 pro idea. Wiping the disk I have done and is a real time burner so not likely to try that at this time since antivirus scans are all negative. 

I did want to have some windows program on the new hard drive. I had paid $20 for a 260GB refurbished drive with windows 10, but got a 1Tb one with no OS. I wrote to the seller and he said the shipping guy must have pulled the wrong one, he would send me another. I told him it was OK, I didn’t need another h.d. I have installed Linux Mint which was my prime intent. If I can figure out how to install Win 7 when all I got when I tried was that I couldn’t, I will. If not I can always try a virtual os. got plenty of gb to play with.

Maybe it is possible to reformat a partition for windows. At the moment I am exhausted with this. So not really willing to think about it.