BIG computer problem,,can anyone help?.......please????

[coadman]

Hey guys,,this is what happened. Im running Windows XP pro on a new pentuim 4 computer. I had "lots' of windows open, minimized down below. I was also in the process of copying a DVD movie in my burner. While all of this was going on, I had two file folders open on the desktop and was drag and dropping files between the two, when this error message popped up(and I wished I could remember exactly what it said, but I cannot)...completly blue screen with this message....."windows has stopped or shut down because of some error, to save possible damage to your computer, if this is the first time you have seen this message please reboot your computer, if this has happened before and computer will not reboot you will have to open bios and blah, blah, blah"(thats what I dont remember). Anyway, I rebooted,,the computer booted up, did its checks on devices and drives, then when it normally opens up to Windows XP, I recieve this message instead...."error loading operating system". Thats all that comes up,,if I reboot,,same results. Anybody have any ideas? My wife uses this computer to run bookkeeping for our local water district, and guess who was going to do end of month billing this weekend! I'm in BIG trouble, unless some one can help me troubleshoot..I would appreciate any attempts to offer assistance.
thank you,
coadman

[bunyip]

First thing to try is see if you can boot to safe mode.

You do this by pressing the F8 key while it is booting and you should get a screen listing several boot options. Select 'safe mode'.

[iooi]

XP disk in and select repair option should not over write you data.....

[coadman]

XP disk in and select repair option should not over write you data.....

Tried that,,but unfortunately it didnt work. Looks like I have a corrupted/damaged partition on the hard drive. I can take the harddrive and place it into another computer that is running XP, and it will bring up the new harddrive, but not the corrupted partition,only brings up the other partition, and unfortunately the damaged partition is the one I have my tax figures I was working on when the incident occured. So,,guess its off to the repair shop in the morning, with the hope they can salvage the contents of the corrupted partition for me,,or else I have alot more tax work to do now, that what I thought. Thanks for all you people's attempts at helping!
coadman

[gmatov]

Coadman,

Do you have Norton Utilities?

If you do, can you install the drive into the other machine and run Disk Doctor on it.

Has saved my ass a time or 2.

Lost a 160 gig except for the 1st partition, said I had a problem, recovered the whole thing. I was almost to the point of a reformat.

No harm in trying.

Cheers,

George

[808smokey]

if it says "No Operating System found/installed" or "No OS found". You lost your NTLDR file. If you know how to use DOS you can copy it from the XP cd-rom to your Hard drive and fix your problem. If not then you'll have to reload windows.

NTLDR is right on the C:\ It's in the i386 folder on the CD i think.

If you don't know DOS just type the basic command /? and it will tell you the different functions

Make sense??

[coadman]

Nope,,dont have Norton Utilities,,and if I did,,I would sure have given your suggestions a shot................Also,,the computer is already at the local repair shop, to have them check the harddrive, or otherwise, I would still be trying all your suggestions to see what happens.
thanks again,
coadman