I thought I would post a qnew question, as I have pretty much messed things up on my end, but I do thanks everyone for responding. Is it to go in and wipe out the hardrive and reinstall ,say ubuntu? I am having someone take a look at the cd drive, because it doesnt seem to be working. I have another 600 coming, that I think it will be much better.

IBM, laptops at least, often have a restore partition on the drive. If that's gone, it's quite possible to wipe the drive and reinstall any OS, as long as there are are no hardware issues. It can be useful to check the memory and the hard drive on an older computer before reinstalling an OS. Both are easily done. Memtest86+ for the ram and the manufacturer's test utility for the hdd. Ubuntu live disks have Memtest among the boot options. The Ultimate Boot CD, free to download and burn, has all the hdd utilities, Memtest and a lot more.