This past Monday, I traded in my desktop machine at work for a laptop. I'd had the desktop for about a year, and loved it. The thing had a gig of memory and a 2.4ghz processor, and I had nary a complaint. The laptop wasn't as much a powerhouse machine, but I decided on the swap because with a laptop, should I get stranded at home this winter, I could potentially work from home as an alternative to burning a vacation day.
However, a few hours ago, the laptop blew up. "Unmountable boot volume". Then it wouldn't reboot. Damn thing died on me. I don't know if the hard drive is gone for good, but if it is, I've lost the project that I just completed today, after about 3 weeks work.
Try this . . .
1. Boot the Windows XP CD
2. When you see the Welcome to setup, press the R key (you should get a DOS prompt)
3. Type "CHKDSK /P" (without the quotes) to the prompt and press ENTER
4. When CHKDSK is done, type "FIXBOOT" and press ENTER
5. When prompted, type "Y" and press ENTER
6. Type "EXIT" and press ENTER
The system should now boot into Windows
If that doesn't work, repeat Steps 1 - 3 above, substituting CHKDSK /R, followed by Step 6 (skip Steps 4 & 5) -- Takes longer, but does the same thing.
If *that* doesn't work, let me know.
Good luck!