I personally don't think it's a hard drive or RAM problem. The boot sequence isn't getting that far. Cannot boot from CD-ROM Code 1 is a BIOS error message. To me it seems like it's either a BIOS problem, an optical drive problem, or bootable media problem. Toxications, if you would please fill in your system specs it would help. I know from first hand experience that some motherboards with older BIOS versions cannot boot from a Windows 7 DVD. In this case though I'm leaning towards the actuall install media being corrupt. I believe you said you bought it from "work". Would they have a DVD that you could make a good copy of?