Hi Jon,

It appears that the boot sector has been corrupted on the hard drive. I will recomend you to re install windows XP on your system:

Note: All your data including your pictures, documents, music and all the applications installed on your system will be deleted.

•    Remove all external peripherals from your system such as scanner, printer, modem or network cables, USB flash driver or other external Hard Drive etc.
•    Insert the Windows XP CD in your system.
•    Restart your system and keep tapping “F12” as soon as the Dell logo appears.
•    When the ‘Boot Menu’ appears, highlight the CD/DVD drive (listed as "CDROM", "CD/DVD" or "CD/DVD/CD-RW") entry from the list and press .
•    If the message ‘Press any key to boot from the CD...’ appears, press a key to continue booting to the CD.
•    In the windows XP setup screen, press to set up Windows XP.
•    In the ‘Windows XP Licensing Agreement’, read the license agreement, and then press to scroll through the agreement.

• Press to accept the terms and conditions specified in the license agreement. The partition screen is displayed depending on your computer configuration.
• Highlight all the partitions and press "D" to delete them.

Note: It will ask you to press 'D' and  a few other characters such as 'enter' or 'L' to delete the partitions.

• If you are prompted to format the partition, use the up or down arrow keys to highlight ‘Format the partition using the NTFS file system (Quick)’. Press .

• The setup will start formatting the files.

• After the above screen completes the formatting, setup will start copying files.

• Once the setup completes, your system will restart automatically.

• You will get “An exciting new look” screen.

• Click ‘Next’ on the ‘Regional and Language Options’ window.

• In the ‘Personalize Your Software’ screen, type your name in the ‘Name’ field and your organization's name in the ‘Organization’ field, if applicable, and click ‘Next’.

• In the ‘Computer Name’ screen, type the computer name in the ‘Computer Name’ field if you want to change it from the name provided and click 'Next'.

• In the ‘Date and Time Settings’ screen, verify that the correct date, time, and time zone appear, and click ‘Next’.

• In the ‘Networking Settings’ screen, click to select ‘Typical’, and click ‘Next.’ If available, click ‘Skip’ to skip the networking setup section.
• Setup will finalize the installation and should complete within 30 minutes of this point. Once complete, the computer will restart.

Note: If you see the message ‘Press any key to boot from the CD’ when the computer restarts, do not press any keys on the keyboard.

• After the computer reboots, the newly installed operating system will attempt to configure itself for your detected devices, however many of your device drivers are not yet installed. Use the following to finish the configuration and prepare the computer for driver installation:

1. If the ‘Display Settings’ message appears, click ‘OK’.
2. If a ‘Monitor Settings’ message appears, click ‘OK’.
3. In the ‘Welcome to Microsoft Windows’ window, click ‘Next’.
4. In the registration screen, click to select ‘No, not at this time’ and click ‘Next’. You will be prompted to register your computer again later.
5. In the ‘Do you want to set up Internet access now?’ window, click to select ‘No, not at this time’ and click ‘Next’.
6. In the ‘Who will use this computer?’ window, type the user name of your choice in the ‘Your name’ text box. Type the name of any additional ‘Users’ that will be using the computer in the additional text boxes provided.
7. Click ‘Next’ to continue.
8. Click ‘Finish’.

Let me know once this is done and I will give you the proper sequence to install the drivers on your system.
Keep me posted. Please reply for any questions.

To Vikram M #iworkfordell:  Thanks for your quick reply, but I'm not prepared to give up hope on the hard drive.  Why does Console Recovery fail, telling me the drive or path specified are not valid?  When I googled that error in connection with Console Recovery, I found a link (included in my original posting) that said the solution to that problem is to run FixMBR from the Console Recovery C prompt.  I haven't done that yet....do you know that won't work?  MS warns not to run that command under certain circumstances, but I'm not sure whether they apply to my system or not.  Is there a way to figure that out before I try it?  Someone else suggested it may just be a problem with the RAM, which I can replace without wiping the HD.  Is that possible?

Thanks for any help you can provide, but I'm really trying to avoid losing the data on the HD.

Hi Jon,

You may try to run FixMBR, however, it may not work and also there is a risk for data loss. This does not appear to be an issue with the RAM. It appears to be an issue with the operating system.

Please reply for any further questions.

Thanks again Vikram.  I haven't yet tried FixMBR, because of concerns about data loss.  Instead, I've bought an IDE to USB cable, in hope I can pull data off the dead drive before I try FixMBR.  I've tried hooking the dead HD to another computer but I can't get the computer to recognize the dead hard drive...it doesn't appear when I view "my computer" nor does it appear as a device in device manager.  Oddly, the only place it does appear is in the BIOS utility under the boot sequence listing.  I've tried removing it from the list as a bootable option, but that doesn't make a difference with it being recognized as a media drive.  I'm still reading up on what could be wrong, in particular, I'm just now working my way through this MS solution -- support.microsoft.com/.../2654149.  Any advice on what else I could do?  Thanks!

Jon

Hi Jon,

In order to access your data by attaching the hard drive with any other system using an IDE to USB cable, you will need a hard drive enclosure to give power to the hard drive. Here is the link which shows the picture of the hard drive enclosure: http://dell.to/11MdxLw 

If you are still unable to fetch your data off the hard drive, you may contact a local technician.

Please reply for any further questions.