Computer problems...?

Crapload of computer problems!!?

• Well i've been quite unlucky with the computers these days, let's start with my laptop, my primary, and most important computer... Well the computer started being a bit slow, its a Gateway MX6448, and it's about 1 1/2 years old, it has a large amount of useless programs I've downloaded, so I decided, i'm just going to reformat it, nothing on there that I really would be unable to regain, I did that with the OS disc that came with the computer, I had it reformat the hardrive, and reinstall the OS, after a couple of days the computer started blue screen crashing a lot, and I decided, well, reformatting is the solution to all problems, so I tried to reformat again, only this time after reformatting the harddrive, the computer blue screened while reinstalling the OS, giving me the error " IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL " , and it does this everytime I try to reinstall the OS... Now for the computer I'm currently on, being without my laptop, I had to find a way onto the internet, so I'm on this old 2001 computer I found in my garage, I managed to get Ubuntu running off of an old CD I have on it, but since its running off of the CD its quite slow, I want to install ubuntu as the OS on the computer, however when I go to install and it goes to the menu for me to select a partion, there no harddrive or anything at all in the list...

• Answer:

  Will the lappy boot from the Ubuntu CD? If not, I'd suspect bad RAM. Will Ubuntu install on the lappy? If not, I'd suspect a bad drive. Hate to mention the obvious, but are you sure the desktop has a hard drive in it? And that it works? Do you see any icons on the Desktop to mount the hard drive? Do they work? Does gparted see the drive? What about "dmesg | grep hd" or "dmesg | grep sd"?