Okay, been a while since I posted here. It took me a long time to find a repair shop, then a while to get there. When I finally got there to ask about a new cd, I was offered the same one I already had. So, tinkering with the one I had, I managed to somehow get the recovery console to copy the files, but now it looks like boot.ini and hal.dll are missing,so I still can't boot the computer. I tried the same method to get them off the disk but it doesn't seem able to find them.
(Sorry if this is considered a necropost.)