I had a power failure in my home over the summer and one of my son's power supplies on his computer got fried. He was running a Linux program but once he installed a new power supply, the computer won't boot up to his Linux operating system. He has a Linux boot up disk, but that didn't work.
I was wondering if he could try booting up with a Windows 98 boot up disk and install Windows on the hard drive. I thought if we could at least get the computer working, we might be able to install Linux again.
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm not at all familiar with Linux so I don't know if I've told you all you need to know.

The hard disk might have been shot. You can always boot from the linux install disks and reinstall linux

What do you mean when you say his linux boot disk won't work? Is this a bootable cd or a bootable diskette? What are the error messages? Like mentioned above, it could be a bad disk or possibly just a corrupted master boot record (MBR). If it is just a corrupted MBR then a linux boot disk will enable your son to boot back into linux and he can reconstruct the MBR with LILO or whatever boot loader he may be using.

Using a windows 98 boot disk will basically accomplish the same thing if the hard drive is not damaged physically. Using the windows 98 boot disk to install windows will fix the MBR so that an operating system such as win98 will at least boot.

To boot (excuse the pun), using either the windows 98 boot disk to install windows or saving the linux install with a linux boot disk should get the job done.

-Weaver

P.S. What distribution of linux is your son running? Thanks.