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First off, unplug your network cable just to avoid the confusion you're experiencing with drives R and S!
I'm intrigued... how is the format command not working? Do you just get a message saying you haven't got a C: drive or what? Give us a clue... tell us what happens when you type FORMAT C:.
Sounds like your hard drives aren't recognised which could be MBR corruption or BIOS (non)detection.
Go into your BIOS and make sure that any HDD are being detected properly - either use the auto-config that most BIOSes have to determine the correct parameters or set your IDE channels to auto-detect drives on boot.
Then boot to DOS and type FDISK
Use fdisk to establish whether your HDDs are initialised and that you have an active partition set. You could split your drives into several partitions while you're in fdisk, if you like.
Reboot the machine to DOS again and then type FORMAT C:, then install your chosen OS.
If you're getting errors, try unplugging a stick of RAM - if you've got a bad stick, files get corrupted when they're copied to the hard drive during install. If you have access to the net, download Memtest86 (it's free) and test your memory, as you have nothing to lose but a little time and it'll tell you whether RAM is a problem or not.
im quite sure its not the RAM as i havent installed anyfor about 4 or 5 months.