So a few days ago I put my pc on and windows wouldn't load the pc kept turning itself off and on before it could. There was a corrupted Sam & Max disc in the DVD drive.I took it for my dad to fix (ex-IT Manager). He got it working after removing the said disc. He said it maybe the fact he set the PC to load windows from the DVD drive as a back up measure and the corrupted disc made it re-start looking for the correct disc.

So is it Sam and Max or is my PC on it's way out?

Ok I got simular Problems some Time Ago.

It´s the Disc or or your DVD Drive (wich iss much cheaper than a new PC)

Do you have trouble with other Disc as well ?

A Workaround is to disable Booting from Disc in the BIos, bui be carefull und don´t mess up other Stuff in the Bios Settings.

What your dad was saying is that the computer mistook the disc for a boot disc. Since the instructions on the "boot disc* didn't help it boot, it got confused.

To fix it, get into BIOS and change your boot order to harddrive first or simply remove the disc.

Discs, how quaint :o)

What @Tallima has stated is quite correct. When a PC boots up it has a sequence that it follows to find Windows or Linux or whichever operating system to start. The boot order maybe something like: CD Drive, Hard Drive. So if you have a disc in when the PC startups it looks at the CD first, and that isn't a bootable system.

Simple answer, never leave discs in the tray, its not good for your system and it sure isn't good for the CD itself.

To note, you could just get yourself some disc imaging software (I use Slysoft cloneCD) and software to mount the image (I use Daemon Tools lite - but will be changing it soon as its getting naff) then you just have an image file on your computer which gets mounted and then looks like a CD. Here is the first google result on doing this:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/241047/how_to_create_and_mount_an_iso_disc_image.html

This way you keep your CD's as clean as possible whilst still using them (and a bit quicker too!)