MBR

How dose the MBR work, and is there a program that can be run from a cd when the system is down? I can get the cd rom to work but when I run my xp pro cd it gets to the ” setup will now start windows ” screen and hangs. Any suggestions on what I might try? I have a MSI mother board (ms 6769 ver:1) 512 meg ram, Nvidia geforce mmx 440 w/8agp 128meg ram, dual hdd (niether works @ present), dvd cd rom drive, cd r/rw drive, 3.5 floppy drive that will access. I am using a dell inlpiron to log onto the net. It has a cd burner installed if that helps. It has no other drives. I need help. Thanks to all.