Restored back-up will not boot

[notreallyageek]

Hello,
I had a problem with a re-installed version of vista (from protected drive, not disks) as it stopped loading windows and hung. So I restored from a bootable back-up and now the pc will not boot from the hard drive - even though I have been experimenting with partition repair software I cannot boot the pc from the hard drive thus cannot access the hard drive in any way - no operating system would load. I thought ah heck vista let's get ubuntu which I now have on a cd but the pc won't boot from it to install. I have all the data on a back-up of vista on the external drive. I don't care what o/s I use I just want to get the pc working at all. Can anyone help?

 

[phil22]

Sounds like the hard drive may have failed, and if that's the case there's no point in trying to install any OS on it. To confirm drive failure, test it with drive maker's diagnostic software for DOS which loads from a bootable CD. Links here: http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287

Create a CD from the ISO file using IMGBurn: http://www.filehippo.com/download_imgburn/

Then boot your faulty PC from that CD to test the internal hard drive. use the Long/Extended test.