what are some problems that might arise from taking two old compaqs and making one? I'd like to use this tower to host my web site and really nothing more. I am willing to reformat but I would like to see if there is anything on the harddrive worth saving. Truth is I already swapped the HD's and the one I want doesn't boot.

Recomendations on a live CD for newbies to linux?

MicHAel

I assume both drives are bootable? Depending on how you plug them into the motherboard, they may be detected in a different order from what you intended, so "sda" is now "sdb". If it seems you are booting off the wrong drive, you can try to change the boot order in the BIOS, or else just swap the drive cables. If your partitions were labeled, you might not see any problem at all.
Once you boot up, mount the other drive's partitions manually and have a look at what is there.
You're likely to get a lot of answers to your second question. A lot of folks will swear by Ubuntu or Kubuntu (the KDE desktop version). Here's a pretty complete list: http://www.livecdlist.com/

I don't have the option to mount original HD, it's missing. Must I start over fresh or is there a way to force it in there without reformatting? I am willing to but only as last resort.

Is ubuntu going to be a good option for an old computer with limited resources?

MicHAel

does the drive work?
from what i can remember you can just see it and need to click on it in nautilus when booting to the live cd.
you should be able to mount both from the live cd and copy files from one to the other

Linux Archive

does the drive appear when you run fdisk -l ?

The HD has xp as OS as did the original. fdisk-l is a linux command is it not? First error I see says "NonSystem disk or error replace and srtike any key when ready"

The HD is not being detected I've found through fedora linux rescue.

Any suggestions?

MicHAeL