Hard Drive Failure/ Boot Failure

[Malandro]

Apols if been asked before (couldn't see it though). My PC hard drive seems to have been corrupted by something or other and now wont boot up. I'm trying to boot from the cd but I cannot remember which key to hold down to get to the option. F8 takes me to the safe mode etc and F12 (which I thought it was) doesn't help. Can anyone tell me either which key to hold down or how to get to Bios or anything. All my pesky PC wants to do is load windows. Help?

[j2buttonsw]

If you want to boot from a CD you must get into the BIOS (usually del or F2) then ensure the boot sequence starts with CD first. You are usually prompted to enter the BIOS setup before the POST (power on, self test) sequence.