So, did u want to reinstall WIN XP or WIN98 Back onto ur pc??
If ur just wanting to reinstall XP back, then just run XP CD at bootup and choose to format the drive. (it will install everything from scratch
On the other hand, if ur wanting to start from Win98 install, the reason why ur Aptiva recovery cd's aren't being recognised is because the drive is still on NTFS... the recovery cd's runs on FAT32's ONLY
U will then need to format the drive back to Fat32,
To Do this ,u will also require to have a win98 boot disk to run Fdis
run fdisk at c: prompt to reformat the C: drive
after completing the fdisk
shutdown p
reboot using boot disk
go back to the c: prompt and run fdisk/mbr
shutdown pc again after as it will just drop to another c:\ prompt line...
and reboot this time with your recovery cd's > this will go thru the normal process....