hard drive or motherboard or CD Drive?

[kermalou]

i Hav e acompaq X1000 that is about two years old now (pretty young really). i got some boot sector probem and the computer crashed completely.

i have tried to reinstall XP but it pauses in the middle.

i have tried to install some distros of linux and it stalls in the middle.

i have tried to run a linux live CD (ubuntu/knoppix) and the computer hangs completely.

now, can this be the motherbaord or cd-drive?

how can i check?

 

[fuzzynavel]

which program told you that you had a boot sector problem???

I presume that it was the hard disk boot sector....which means that your hd is dead....

Try the freezer trick to see if you can get any data from it before binning it

 

[corkyg]

I suspect you have a CD drive problem. Can you try running an external USB or Firewire drive?

 

[kermalou]

i am trying to figure out the easiest way to be able to boot into linux from a usb flash drive, but they are all too confusing for a newb like me at the moment

 

[Bassyhead]

Originally posted by: kermalou
i am trying to figure out the easiest way to be able to boot into linux from a usb flash drive, but they are all too confusing for a newb like me at the moment

That would probably be the easiest way to isolate any problems with the cd-rom drive, though