What do these two cpu's need before I give them away?

I just opened and closed the cd tray, the drive spun and the Windows cd started off with the green rolling hills background picture and went into tutorial mode with why Windows XP is so great and the improvements...........................

 

OK, I saw the prompt at the bottom of the screen for about 2-3 seconds, I pressed "y" a few times, then hit enter a few times and nothing happened. The computer may a beebing sound for every button I hit. What's that about?

 

When I hit the "y" key once, the screen goes away 2 seconds later and loads Windows. Should I drop the tower at a cpu store?

 

Yeah I tried that too. I should be getting a call in a few minutes, after that I may just drop it off a few streets over at a place called Mystery Byte, a repair store.

 

I may look into it for one of my computers but this one is being given away, so I'll keep it simple. Thanks for the info.

The prompt says something like "Boot from ATABI cd" or something similar but I googled a few pictures and I'm supposed to see "press any key to boot from cd" below the first line but it isn't there.

 

I still can't boot from a cd, so I would still be treading water.

 

Scoundrels, these children are not good sir! This cd came with the computer, it's about 4 years old I think but may be a little older, I can't remember the exact date. So, no it's not a disc I made my self and it's not burnt. Perhaps instead of trying to fix the computer myself, I should have hung around an elementary school looking for "Wizards"? Or maybe set up a wireless router and waited 5 minutes? My problems could be solved!

I'll try another bottable cd.

P.S. Would the cd say "bootable" on it, or any other kind of wording? This one just says Windows XP Experience the Excitement with a blue background.

 

Uh OH! I ran a Windows Millennium DVD that states "Run Setup.exe from the cd/dvd prompt", I'll assume that means it's a bootable cd and I'm totally SCREWED! It's over, dust bin time for this machine, there's no goin' back and no sleep tonight! What a way to start off a new year!

Or perhaps I could drop it off tomorrow to someone who actually knows how to properly operate a computer....

 

I uninstalled the cd drive, then rebooted my computer, then loaded the drivers {thinking it was a software issue}, then tried to boot from the cd again, no go. In a few hours I'll bang by that computer store for the formatting and the gig of RAM.

Thanks for all of the input fellas!