Recovery Cd Does not work

I installed AIM a few days ago and it caused a massive amount of problems with my computer. I decided rather than deal with it I just wanted to do a fresh install. The problem is my recovery cd does not work. I have read about a few other people having this issue but no solution other than find a vista cd somewhere. I don't have a vista cd and I need my computer this weekend, are there any options for me here?
If not, where can I get an anytime upgrade cd and how much is it going to cost me?

 

A recovery CD is not a full OS disk it is a reinstalation disk.
Can you get into Windows?

 

What exactly do you mean it does not work? The computer does not boot from it?

Please note you also have a recovery partition (unless you deleted it) which can be used to recover windows by pressing F9 during bootup.

 

I put in the recovery CD, attempted to boot the computer with it. I got "Loading windows files...." Then the loading bar from the splash screen. I looked away for a minute and when I looked back the screen was black and the notebook was off.
I did it again and the same thing happened.
Then I tried resetting the BIOS to defaults, and made sure I was booting from the cd rom. When I tried to boot it up after that attempt it loaded to the windows login background but all of the buttons that are normally there do not load. Just the background and a mouse pointer.
I tried switching it back to booting from the hard drive and it did exactly the same thing. It seems like it is not even trying to boot from the cd no matter what setting I have it on.
I then called Asus support. They had me attempt loading using F9. This did the exact same thing, loaded the login background but no buttons, just a background page and a mouse pointer.
Asus then suggested I mail in my computer for support and said I would have it back in 5-10 days.
I will do this if I have to but I would really prefer to fix it at home. I use my computer almost every day for school and it is going to be a huge inconvienece to not have it for two weeks.
I have heard that if you can get a windows installation CD as long as you have your CD key it will work from that. I have heard the way to do this is to get a windows anytime upgrade CD but I do not know where to get those.
Could anyone link me to the site where those are available? Is there anywhere I can go in person to get one?
Does anyone have ideas for anything else I can try? I have read about people having probles with the recovery CD before but I have not seen a good solution.

Also I can not get into windows anymore, the notebook will not sucessfully boot. All it will do is go to the logn background with no buttons and a mouse pointer.

 

Actually, the Windows kit has to be an OEM kit in order for your serial # to work.

I would first try to wipe the OS partition, and then try to install again. Maybe that does it.

 

How can I wipe that partition when my computer will not boot?
I also just noticed that when it starts up it very very quickly flashes this message "Media test failed, check cable"

 

Oh there are more ways to boot than Windows

Hmm maybe something is wrong with the IDE or SATA cable to the CD or the HDD?

But there's an easy way to check. Namely, download the latest stable Knoppix distribution from Knopper.net, burn the ISO to a CD, and boot from it.

Your HDD should be detected and automounted at /mnt/hda1 (the OS or recovery partition), /mnt/hda* the other partitions where you replace * by numbers.

If you can read those OK, probably all the hardware is fine.

You can then start up XWindows (if it's not already started) using startx, and run qtparted, a partitioning utility. With that, you can format the OS partition to FAT32 (I recommend FAT32, NTFS support isn't stellar in Linux).

MAKE SURE YOU FORMAT THE RIGHT PARTITION! or you might lose valuable data (from the 2nd partition).

Perhaps you can also try a FDISK /MBR on the HDD. For that, download the FreeDOS iso burn it to a CD boot from it and run FDISK /MBR 1. This will overwrite the master boot record and get rid of any quirks that might have creeped in there.

Hopefully you will then be able to install using the recovery partition (F9 at boot).

 

Unfortunately the fixes you suggested are too complicated for me to attempt on my own. I am sending it in for service today. They said on the phone that it sounds like a hard drive or motherboard issue but it was working just fine until I tried to reinstall. It seems really wierd that the motherboard or hard drive would decide to fail at the exact second I put in the recovery CD.

 

Maybe you're more comfortable with FreeDOS? That one won't reed NTFS partitions but you'll be able to format them to FAT32 nevertheless (namely the OS partition).