How do you setup hdd

[20phileagles]

I installed a new Hdd in my HP Pav DV2000, The Hdd was formatted with and I want to install a new OS. I have a few discs, XP, Vista, from old machines. Why does the HP say NTLDR is missing? Ive installed many OS and never had this before. Im also very rusty at computer tinkering. Before I formatted it, I was getting Missing Bootloader errors.
What am I doing wrong??

 

[hang-the-9]

What did you install on the drive? Was it formatted and partitioned? Did the setup go though OK? Are these disks normal OS disks or restore disks from different brands? Restore disks are made to be used only on the system they came with, if you try a restore disk with a different system, it won't boot usually.

You can try to image or clone your old hard-drive to an external drive using clonezilla or a similar program, then restore that image or clone onto the new drive.