Tell him to make sure that it is not trying to boot from any other device
such as a floppy left in the floppy drive. It is really hard to advise what
to do without knowing more of what he did BUT if he has the install disk and
the product key he could try a repair/upgrade install of the operating
system booting from the cdrom with the install disk in it. If that works it
should preserve his data and applications but require that he first install
the service pack used [assuming it was not slipstreamed into the install
disk] and then all critical security updates from Windows Updates when done
but only connecting to the internet after some sort of firewall protection
is verified such as the built in XP firewall being enabled. First however
see the link below on how to recover from boot problems using Recovery
Console. The link also explains how to use Recovery console.
Worse case scenario is that if his data files are not encrypted the hard
drive can be placed in another computer for attempted file
recovery/operating system repairs or possibly booted from an operating
system installed on a cdrom such as Bart's PE. Make sure he knows he must
never select any option that results in his hard drive being formatted if
attempting a repair install. If he has any EFS encrypted files and has not
backed up his EFS private key to a password protected .pfx file then a new
install of the operating system will result in him not being able to access
his encrypted files. The links below may help. --- Steve
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm --- read section
under recovering from boot problems using Recovery Console first.
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ --- Bart's PE
