XP Won't Boot; Can't Access Safe Mode Either

[Guest]

A few weeks ago, when starting up, my VAIO began to stop during Windows
startup.

It shows a "DOS type" window with hardware, port and device information.

At the bottom of the page, is says:
"Disk boot failure, Insert system disk and press enter"

If I repeatedly hit F8 during startup to get to safe mode, I get the same
error and cannot get into safe mode.

It seems as though the PC thinks it is booting from a disk or CD but there
are none in any drives. I've repeatedly opened and closed both the DVD and
CD units hoping to "trigger" something. No such luck.

In reading here on XP, I've become aware that I may be able to do a "repair
install"

When I boot up with the Sony XP recovery CD in the drive, I'm asked to
accept the Microsoft license. The next screen says:

"The hard drive is not partitioned; this utility creates DOS partitions and
restarts your computer. You must delete non DOS partitions to continue? Do
you wish to continue?

My question is, if I continue with creating DOS partitions aren't I wiping
the drive clean will not be able to recover existing applications files?

I really need to recover what's on this hard drive and will ensure there are
effective backup strategies in place in the future.

Please help. Thanks !
Any suggestions? I really hope to get this back up without having to wipe
the C drive clean.

Thanks.

 

[David B.]

It is unlikely that you can do a repair install using a Sony recovery cd. If
the Recovery cd is saying you have no partitions on the drive, you need to
stop, if you have it create the needed partitions your data is history.
IF the drive is still readable, and it sounds like it's not if it's
partition is gone, install it as a slave in a second PC to copy the data
off, then run the hard drive mfg's diagnostic utility on the drive to see if
it has failed.