Perhaps something did not finish installing properly. Can you get to a
terminal? If so, type: sudo apt-get -f install and it will finish installing
and fix any broken packages.

If you can't get to a terminal try the recovery mode from grub. See:
www.sucka.net/.../

That it didn't finish something is a real possibility but
I can't get to anything because it won't boot the message on screen says I have
no OS
"non-system disk error replace and press any key."

That error usually comes up because media was left in either the CD or floppy
(for really old systems) (maybe even thumb on newer systems) drives and the boot
order in BIOS has the removable-media drives set before the hard drive. If
there's no removable media in any of the drives, then something nasty has
happened to your boot sector.

That was the first thing I checked but even though there was no media in the CD
drives it wouldn't boot. It is set to boot from CD ROM 1st and When I got your
reply I was going to change the boot order then I turned my head and saw a cheap
little 128 mg thumb drive not bootable stuck in the external USB hub. The
machine is not set to boot from USB but I took it out and tried it anyway.
Success .Ain't it strange how the little things can really mess things up.

If you can get grub then you may be able to run the recovery mode and run
fsck as I previously posted. Can you tell us about your drive setup?