hi ,if your bios looks like this one .http://www.yoreparo.com/images/artic..._m41f2952d.jpg ,, then when in the bios go to the one that reads pc health status

ok well i still don't know how to get to the BIOS lol

I c+p some methods I found by googling (which was just declared to be a legal english verb ) :

"Reboot the machine. When the company name, Compaq, displays in big red letters on the Presario's screen, a cursor should appear in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Press F10, and instead of booting normally, you should see the setup screen for the Compaq's BIOS.

Someone, in response to seeing this page, told me that some Compaq machines have F12 as a BIOS setup key. If F10 brings you no joy, it's worth a try. Another person just recently suggested Ctrl + F10 for newer models."

Another guy says:
"You get the BIOS setup menu by hitting Control-Alt-Escape while the "Compaq" logo is on the screen at boot time."

Which one is right, depends on the exact model your Presario is.
The most common thing with other computers is pressing <del> or
<F2> during bootup to enter the BIOS setup screens.

Ok thanks for that.

OK I found the BIOS screen and there was no option anywhere that showed the temperature of my PC. I'm going to upload a picture of what my BIOS screen looks like so I can show you.

OK, something major has just happened. Earlier today I contracted a small virus that messed up my computer a little bit. I was thinking that I could easily get rid of it with a few virus scans, but of course that didn't work because everytime I ran a scan, my computer would crash. So then I tried to do a system restore. The first time I did it, my PC crashed right in the middle of the restore. So then I tried again, and it actually completed the restore but I got some wierd messages during the restore. The messages stated that "Windows has to keep a registry entry due to a log". That wasn't the exact message but that's basically what it said. I've never seen this message during a System Restore so I was thinking that this was the virus acting up again. So then after the Restore finished, it started loading but then it stopped at the blue screen with the Windows logo on it (you know the same screen that shows the"Welcome" message on it when you turn on your PC). So now, I can't even load to my desktop. It just stops at that screen. And I've tried going through "Safe Mode" but it still stops at that blue screen. Now I'm thinking that my computer is just completely trashed. Can anyone tell me what has happened??

Sounds pretty messed up by malware, yes. You can try waiting a bit longer: Watch the HDD-LED if there is still flickering, indicating activity - once I waited 30 minutes for a system recovering from something.

But since your system seems to be compromised, it doesn't matter too much that you can't boot it up anymore. You'll need a complete reinstallation of XP, including formatting the HDD. Some experienced users may try to recover the OS and to remove malware with a "BART PE" bootable CD or using a Linux Live-CD, but if things messed up that much, a recovery may take longer than installing Windows and is not trivial. "Easy recovery" is a rare thing and with modern malware, you even can't rely on scans run from the infested system itself.

Instructions on "how to install XP" can be found if you feed Google with that string. You'll find sites like:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
or
http://www.theeldergeek.com/xp_home_..._-_graphic.htm

You really should try to get someone experienced on your PC to assist you with this, if you never installed XP before. Good luck that you have access to some more computers to download needed stuff and ask questions about it. Don't give up. It can't get much worse than it is.

Yea, yesterday I went up to a computer store for help and the guy up there explained that I need a full re-install. So now, I'm waiting for a CD to come that's gonna do all that stuff for me, since my PC doesn't have it's on "System Recovery" feature. Thanks for all the help and suggestions. If this doesn't fix the problem then I'm just gonna buy a new PC, which is the last thing I want to do.

LOL,worse case would be all you would need to do is buy a new hard drive !! and install windows on it .not a new computer

lol well turns out that the computer techs couldn't fix it so my dad bought a new one. I just have a quick question. On the box it says that this PC has 512 MB of RAM, but my system specs says I only have 368 MB of RAM. Anybody know why this is? And I just want to thank everybody who helped me through this situation.