Ready to go nuts

My first time here, I'm Vince from Coney Island Brooklyn NY.

Two of the kids on the block found and  asked me to fix an old XPS H266

it has no op system, I've tried every which way, using the WIN98 disk,
98USB, MADBOOT, in the case of 98USB it starts to copy the files and then tells me about a bad file and stops installing.

In total I've tried this on five different HDs. Mind you I've done this many times before with no problems, BUT this is my first time on a DELL.

Any help please they're poor kids and they would love to have their own system
.