so its wasnt seeing hard drive, and i switched it out , but everytime i try and boot, it wont let me into BIOS, then goes to black screen that says enter password, the guy says he doesnt think there was a password,, but like i SAID, it shows up before any windows screen.
any help???The aspire ax1700 is not worth repair. It can be sold for parts. Maybe. It maybe near 8 years old and does not perform well enough h to justify an investment of time and money

If the old drive has important data, it can be slaved to anohter computer.

Others liklety will agree.   

Try resetting the BIOS by clearing it via removal of the 2032 battery or if there is a cmos clear jumper clear it that way.

Once your able to clear the bios back to default you should then have the ability to install an OS and get it running.

As far as age of system and not wasting time and money on, I dont think you would have to invest much time and money to get this working... if this system is a CORE 2 Duo E7300 as google search shows its still very capable of being used for most computer needs, however heavier gaming demands might be outside of this systems processing means. My wife has a Core 2 Duo E6600 with 3GB 667Mhz DDR2 RAM with Windows 7 32-bit and its pretty quick to boot and game with for games like World of Warcraft etc. She has a GeForce 9800GT 1GB card in it as well.

So I wouldnt just give up on it. If you have time to invest in this I think you could get it working again with no problems if this is the only issue.