PC Help!!!

[Btango05]

Ok I know there's myriads of forums out there on this but I thought I'd ask here before I have to join a few other forums: I do have a little background with pc's but I switched to a Mac about 2 yrs ago and I'm a little rusty....

So I have this older desktop that I let my son use as his computer and it started having problems booting up, specifically it got the message about "Data Execution Prevention" "userinit prevention" I found a forum that post a fix for this but its very involved! I just figured I'd do a fresh install, but the OEM OS cd will not boot. So then I tried to to do a system restore and now it won't boot up at all! I get a "invalid partition" message in DOS format, I'm unable to type any commands. If I had a floppy drive I would run Windows 98 fdisk command but this PC doesn't have a floppy drive. I did make sure I changed the BIOS to boot from CD too....

So now I'm just thinking of buying a brand new HDD and installing a new OS. But will I be able to do this? With out having a working PC will I be able to put the new HDD in the tower then throw the OS disk in?

[Chris M]

...the OEM OS cd will not boot. So then I tried to to do a system restore and now it won't boot up at all!

When first starting up the computer, enter setup (BIOS) by pressing F2, Esc, Del...or whatever key your system asks you to press to get into Setup.

Find the Boot order, and make sure that CD/DVD/Optical drive is set before HDD. In many cases, HDD is set first in order to speed up the boot process (the system ignores CD's, Floppies, etc.)

[JimmyD]

make sure you're using a PS2 mouse and keyboard when you're working in BIOS. If you can't type/move a cursor, thats probably why. older computers can't recognize input from USB keyboards in BIOS

[Btango05]

BIOS is set to boot from CD, and I am using PS2 keyboard.........

[paul0660]

Is the cd drive present in the bios? If you put another cd in the drive does it give you the message "disk boot failure,insert system disk and press enter"? If not, the drive is not working. Try the cd in another drive to see if it can be read. If you are getting a bios screen, you have the settings correct, and the drive and cd are good, it should boot up, at which point you can try to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the os.