| Might still be worth trying to borrow an original Windows XP installation disk to boot from that as ian suggested (or take it into a repair shop to check). A colleague at work had a similar error a few weeks back. The XP recovery didn't run when I tried that but I then tried chkdsk and it managed to find & fix a duff sector (XP booted up OK after that). Seems a shame to bin it if its something similar.
Keith |