Help / advice asked Windows XP/boot device

[The Dong]

Gert van Santen wrote:
> Before going to the computer shop, is there anything that can be 
> done / checked / changed or whatever?

You want to change your parents? :)

Sounds like either boot files corruption or disk errors/bad sectors.
You may have to change the bios boot order for cdrom first.
(change it back after)
Boot from the original XP disk and choose the first option setup windows 
xp now (enter key)
It should go through a bit about license then come up with a screen 
finding your XP install. THEN choose to repair.
This is a reinstall repair, not using the repair with recovery console, 
which is useless unless you know what to do there. It should check the 
disk and reinstate the boot stuff.
This also works for when you have upgraded too many parts (motherboard 
change mainly) and XP refuses to boot any more (I did this a month ago)

No. 10 here:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=348