following a motherboard failure I have replaced it with
ASRock K8NF6P-VSTA. (only one ide skt)
I have an ide hard drive and a CD RW which is also needs an ide skt.
Funds are a bit low at the moment (being one of the ancient brigade).
Until I can afford a sata drive, can I use CD RW in the ide skt internal
and the external ide drive I have (USB) to install the Operating System
without having an internal hard drive in the PC

Roy

Yes if the MOBO supports it...
Check the BIOS for USB support, or boot from external device.
Your external HDD needs to be your C: drive....

I know vista dosen't support it but i think I got told windows xp does. Thinking about it further it has to as you can install it on an eeepc which has no internal hard drive or cd/dvd drive. so with xp yes. just make sure your'e external hard drive is big enough.

Just out of curiosity, how do you know that? And why doesn't it??

I'm not saying you're wrong. I've never tried it, i'm just, yanno, curious.

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You may want to update your BIOS to the latest version before you attempt this. It seems that some people have had problems installing Vista to an external drive, although a few people have succeeded. Like I said its realy down to the BIOS.

Thanks to TOMSOLOMON and NIKSTER 2015
I haven't installed the MOBO yet (waiting for Thermal Paste for CPU)
but it does support USB.
I will certainly this idea out as a stopgap until obtain a Sata DVD-RW.
Thanks again I will keep you posted.
Roy