Hello.. I've recently been bored over the past week or so.. Needed a IT project, SO I hopped in my car, Went to the Goodwill and found some old crappy computer that "MOST LIKELY" wouldn't start up.  SO, I brought her home and hooked her up.. Turned on the power, It was a gateway computer.  The logo came up "Gateway" and then this other BLACK SCREEN came up saying : Boot drive cannot be located, Please reboot your system and select the correct boot drive location.  Well.. I was pretty pissed 'cause, you know.. I didn't think it was going to be too advanced of a problem..    Anywho.. I'm guessing that the main problem was that the goodwill "Homeless Technitian" Erased the hardrive that was donated w\ the Gateway.. I think that he deleted the Operating System A.K.A. Windows XP (Atleast That's what I thought was on there before.)  I can't figure out how to install Windows XP I have the disk and everything.. I insert it.. But nothing.  I'm not very familiar with Gateway PC's and I'm really starting to hate the company Gateway.. Well if there's anyone out there that knows about or has had this problem.. Please.. Feel free to enlighten me on what the hell I should do.

- P S - I bought the computer unknowingly it had a sticker on the bottom saying 'As is no refunds'  I just got screwed?  

   My guess would be that whoever gave it to Goodwill did not want their data available to whoever bought it so they deleted the drive or just removed the drive.
   First you need to make sure that it has a harddrive.  If it does, partition the drive, format it, and then put a Master Boot Record on it.
   I would think that if the CD drive works, that the computer would see the Windows XP CD in the CD drive and would help you do all of that.  If it does not recognize the Windows XP CD when you start the computer, look in the BIOS settings and make sure that the CD drive is set to boot before the harddrive.

That was my first guess, that there was no partition installed on the hardrive