"Operating System not Found"

[Jetfire]

Yep, it's the big one. Either my hard drive is dead, or something major has been screwed up. A family member had been browsing the web when a blue error screen popped up, and since then I've been getting the "Operating System not Found" message whenever I attempt to restart.

So I have two goals- recover some files if possible (needed for work/school), and get the computer functional again. I'm not hopeful that I'll get either. I found this while researching methods:

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

But while reading through the included tools and abilities, I realized I'm way in over my head here. I know nothing about copying files, recovering files or hard drives, or anything of that nature.

Most of the files I want to recover are just Microsoft Word files. The computer has a floppy drive, a CD-RW drive, and a USB port for a thumb drive I own. It used to run Windows 98SE, but was running Windows 2000 just before this crash.

Any help that could be provied would be very much appreciated. I thank you for your time and assistance.

[patio]

The UBCD is indeed a great resource.
However most of the tools do require a better than average level of expertise to use and you can wind up sometimes doing more harm than good if you're not careful.

That being said the method i'd suggest for your data retrieval would be to pull the hard drive out and hook it up as a slave drive in another machine that has a CD/DVD burner.
2 reasons for this...1) it's the simplest and quickest solution and 2) your version of Windows does not need to be operable to do this.

When it's hooked up as a slave then boot the working machine and open Windows Explorer. You will then be able to see your drive and all the data you need to recover.
Copy all you need to a New directory and then burn it to CD/DVD.

If you need any further assistance let us know...
And Welcome Aboard.