Installing an OS - maybe?

Hi, new member here! *waves*

I hope this is the right section to ask this in, to be honest I am not sure if it is the operating system or not.

I was given a laptop a few weeks ago, its a toshiba satellite 440cdt. The person that gave it to me, told me that it was running windows but he tried to install linux on it, and ran out of space so he "trashed" the contents of the HD.

At the moment when you switch it on, it gets as far as a memory initialise and then nothing else happens. I figured all it needs is an operating system be that win98 or just DOS or whatever. I downloaded the full DOS 7.10 install that this forum has in the download section, but when I try to install it I get an error message about there being "no primary FAT file system" installed.

Can anyone offer me some ideas as to what I need to do to get this beasty working again? What I would like to do is just install win95/98 back on it but before I go finding a copy of that from who knows where I'd like to make sure that it is just needing an OS, and that it isn't some other kind of problem. Btw, it only has a very small about of memory (32mb I think) and a 2GB hard drive (I think, that's what I was told) and it has a CD drive. I just want to use it for writing documents and playing small games (minesweeper, pacman etc) on. Hence just wanting win98 installed.

Also, it came with some ethernet cards or something. I have no idea what they are, except I think they are internet related? can someone help me out with that? I'm fairly competent with desktop computers and I've worked with them previously but it was pretty much just sticking memory or cards inside or swapping CD drives over. I have never used a laptop or tried to install operating systems etc.