I recently tried to boot my computer and I am receiving the following error:

partition signature!=55AA

Not sure what I am supposed to do next. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Debbie

Please use more meaningful subjects when posting - this will help attract the people who are best able to help you with your problem.

Do you know what boot loader you use?

Thread title changed to something that hopefully will increase the exposure of your thread.

Is that the full message, and when do you get it - at POST or once the boot-loader has started ???.

yes, i get this message when i try to restart my computer in the boot mode.

I used the PCbeginner utilities suite 2006 CD that I purchased online since i misplaced my computers boot cd. This cd is a fix it yourself bootable cd. I attempted to reload my windows xp and was unable to and once I kit the esc button I get this message when the cd is out of my computer.

I'm lost, I guess I need to take my computer in for repair.

I don't quite understand how this is related to Linux. One thing you might try before you take your computer for repair is to download and burn a Linux LiveCD like Knoppix, and see if you can recover any files you need to a USB key or external disc. It might be a good precaution before taking it for repair - those guys sometimes just wipe everything without trying to recover.

Could be a bit difficult if this is the only machine.
As to what caused it who knows ... disk dying maybe, if you were using windows, a virus maybe ...

If it were me, I'd just re-write the partition table - that should also re-write the signature bytes. Of course I'd do it from a Linux liveCD as per above, but @debbie0729 may not have that option.

But then how did they post here?

I've moved this thread to the general forum because it does not appear to be a Linux specific issue.

I was trying to install reactOS on a third partition which already had a functioning Centos 6.2 system. ON reboot I had only this message and it would go no further:
So I think it is valid to being here, and now if someone could kindly help?

The MBR has been incorrectly written. 55aa is the 'magic' which signals the end of the partition table and sseems to be missing, so your MBR is trashed. Need to boot with some CD and repair that, then start over trying to install linux.

Yeah, it pays to have a Knoppix DVD very handy, because this is a stand-alone bootable version of Linux that is rather a "Swiss Army knife" for repairing all sorts of systems. What you need to do is to rebuild the MBR, and you ought to be able to find a utility (maybe on that disk, do some research first) that will "guess" what the original MBR contents were by looking for well-known content at well-known locations on the various tracks.

Then, I would have a look at the smart utilities, which allow you to access the built-in drive diagnostics and logging capabilities that (I betcha didn't know that) every IDE drive has. Find out if the drive has been self-reporting or self-fixing(!) any I/O errors recently.