xp pro crash, with subsequent inability to boot

[chandlaj]

housemate woke up this morning.
large pop-up window that he didn't want to read.
all he picked up were, 'restart computer' and something about disk space being deleted.
why he didn't read on is beyond me.
but here's the dilemma.
when one reboots the machine, no hard drives are detected, and following the system specs box appearance, i am told ntldr is missing, and to press ctrl+alt+del to restart.
so i try grab the nearest system disk, and attempt to boot up the machine with its help.
instead, once the system specs box appears, nothing happens.
no command prompt, nothing.
when i type stuff in, (ie. sys c: - which i read was the command to copy the system files over) the floppy drive clunks along with nothing to show for its efforts in the end.
a continually inaccessible machine.
i think the machine is fubar.
at least by my limited knowledge base.
any ideas?
help...

[caperjack]

try this ,
Boot to the repair console with your XP CD in the drive...

1. Copy X:\i386\NTLDR C: (X is your CD ROM drive)
2. Copy X:\i386\NTDETECT.COM C:

[chandlaj]

only problem is...
i can't get to a command prompt to do anything.
even with a system disk.
yikes.

[caperjack]

if you have a winxp disk put it in and boot to it(you may need to change the boot sequence in the bios to get the cd to boot up) and hit R for repair and type it in there .

[chandlaj]

excellent....
i'll give 'er a shot....