No idea how it happened, but some of the Windows XP system files got corrupted. So my hard disk will no longer boot. I tried the repair console, but this will NEVER fix the problem. I need to copy a couple of files from this hard disk, so I can't simply format it. Unfortunately I could not copy them to a floppy using the repair console, "Access denied" !! Darn it (I flipped the plastic on the disk, so It is not write blocked).
The broken drive is recognised in the BIOS. I am using an Abit NF-7 Mobo. I put an old hard disk in for now, a 6.4g disk, and installed XP. Set the system to boot from this drive, and then put the broken disk in as a slave. This should work in theory, however, as soon as the broken drive is connected I get this message just after finding all the drives "Cannot load Operating System".
All help is greatly appreciated.