Black Screen/ Blinking Cursor of Death Syndrome :(

Hi Forum!
This is my first technical issue thread so I pray I recieve worthwhile help!!
I own an Asus Vista HP laptop manufactured in '99 and bought it second-hand in NOV. '10.
I made the big mistake of taking this lp without any discs whatsoever and thought I could just buy some later on.
The problem started just after I had DL Spybot Search and Destroy followed by a trial Norton 2012 Anti-Virus.
After shutdown I experienced the black screen/blinking cursor of death!!
I am also not able to access anything but BIOS(F2) and Escape.
F8,F10,F11 does not seem to work after many tries
I purchased a Recovery Disc Startup CD from an Ebay Vendor, however the CD drive also fails to read the disk! (did setup DVD drive as 1boot priority)
The good news is this particular Asus lp is equipped with a secondary Linux based OS for lightweight web browsing and media access called Express Gate.
I can view the hard drive and both play music and view photos through Express Gate so I'm sure my problem isn't a hard-drive failure? (EG can also read contents of inserted CD)
If there is any other way to get into my system restore prompt or at least get the drive to recognize a disc I would appreciate the help and advice.
Thanks.

Welcome
You are experiencing one of the most troubling problems with Vista. Here are some potential solutions
If these do not work, you may want to reinstall using the restoration partition. We can help, if you give us the make and model of your computer.
Black screen of death fix for Windows XP, Vista, 7 (updated) - Computerworld Blogs
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977675/
This last solution was written by our own Corrine
http://securitygarden.blogspot.com/2008/12/mysterious-vista-ksod-black-screen-of.html

I own an Asus UX50V-RX05 Notebook PC had it since Nov. '10 with no original discs.

Press f9 at startup
If you want to save your stuff first, please post

Yes thank you I would love to salvage all my files and photos somehow but as I said earlier only F2 and escape seems to respond. The other F commands sadly do not.

OK, first back up your stuff
Use Ubuntu Live CD to Backup Files from Your Dead Windows Computer - How-To Geek
Then turn off the computer and press f9, if that does not work press f9, quickly and rapidly, many times
That should work, if you use f9 in that fashion.