You're problem is that your hard drive has somehow become corrupt. Actually it's either your BIOS settings have changed somehow or your missing something from your Windows folder. You'll likely need to reformatt it all now, sadly I've no idea what else you can do.

Actually, you shouldn't need to format. This is a common problem and a simple Google search should give you some ideas. This might be a good place to start. Good luck.........

Boot from Windows XP CD and then go to Recovery Console.
At the C:\ prompt type the following commands:

fixmbr (press Enter)
fixboot (press Enter)

Remove XP CD and reboot.

Ron

Hey ya, I'd like to know if that worked.

If he fixes the mbr isn't that the same as formatting it, thus forcing him to reinstall it anyways?

No - with reasonable luck he will not need to reformat.

Message Edited by gudgeon on 04-29-200607:41 AM

Sure you booted from the XP CD?

You may have to do Repair/Reinstall of XP. You won't lose your personal files or software you installed, but you will have to reinstall all the XP updates and hotfixes as soon as the Repair is done (and firewall and antiviral software are running again).

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kb/en/document?dn=1056993&l=en&langid=1&c=us&cs=19&s=dhs

Ron

A common cause for this used to be leaving a non-bootable floppy in the drive. The system would try and boot from it and this message would result.

I do not know if this still occurs (it did with older XP systems) and I do not have a floppy drive with which to test it.