install boot sectors?

[Asian Fury]

my friends hard drive failed on his inspiron 5100 so dell sent him another hd. but he put it in and got an error message that the thing didn't have a boot sector. how stupid is that? anyway is there anyway to install boot sectors using a floppy or something?

 

[Bullitt]

dell sent him a new HDD. How is he going to use it, you should install an operating system first, and most OS's will install the boot sectors.

A windows98 startup disk will work, just use fdisk to partition and format or use the windowsXP disk to format/install.

I dont think we have the proper question to give the right answers.