Can't boot XP and can't get into safe mode

[Guest]

When booting, the PC stops on the initial BIOS screen and displays "Insert
book disk and restart"

Hitting F8 during boot up is fruitless; it's impossible to get to safe mode.

What step should I take now?

I read there is a "repair" install but when I insert the manufacturer
provided recovery disk, I get a message to accept the XP license; the next
screen says "Hard Drive is nor partitioned. This utility creates DOS
partitions and restarts your computer. If you see this message again, it may
be caused my non-DOS partitions on the drive. You must delete Non DOS
partitions to proceed.

Should I continue, won't creating partitions delete all existing data and
files?

I'm stuck.

 

[Guest]

This won't be much help, because I have a similar problem. I can't boot into
safe mode either. But my computer does restart and gets to the logon screen.
It then freezes and when I hit the reset button it always does a disk check.
Sometimes I see corrupt messages about the files during the disk check. So
you may have corrupt files causing this.

I'm still researching this and if I were you, I wouldn't do anything you are
unsure about unless you are ready to start from scratch.