Idiot here.

I have been using Jaunty for the past 6 months or so with no problems on the kid's computer. Upgraded to Karmic yesterday and things were not working well, system shutdown for no reason, poor video streaming, slow response. So I got this stupid idea to reload XP using the compaq recovery discs. Now the third disc won't load, and I'd like to just reload Jaunty and move on but it won't boot from the disc. I can still access BIOS screen.

This is a Presario SR1010NX circa 2004.

If this is in wrong area please move~seemed like something a newbie would do..thank you!

Do you mean that when you put the Ubuntu CD in and the POST says "Booting from CD" or whatever and nothing happens?

OK here's an update~~I'm guessing I had a bad recovery disc and a bad ubuntu burn disc. I had a Puppy distro that I knew was good and the system works for Puppy booting from the disc...even though I installed to HD it is still a no go..I get this on the screen:

"NTLDR is missing"

Puppy works pretty well of the disc though~~trying to get it to install onto the HD, not sure what I fouled up.

You might have fouled up the boot sector on the HD. Some of those OEM Windows recovery disks are known to do that. Someone at work once had one so messed up he had to have the drive erased mechanically.

Ah, that sounds like it may be the easiest way to go...