No OS installed during Boot

[omar777]

Lately I've been reading articles and guides for overclocking. Curious about my system and what my BIOS settings were, I went into BIOS and took a look. I went through the menus monitoring my vcore and temp and etc. I never changed anything. Once I knew what my FSB was and all I exited without saving. My computer restarted. It went thru the Boot cycle, and check the drives and all, and listed CD-ROM twice on the bottom and it stood there. The windows XP boot screen never came on.
So, curious as to why that happened, I restarted and ran thru it serveral times. Same thing each time. So then I went BIOS again to see if I changed anything, knowing I didnt. Everything seemed fine. So, satisfied that it wasnt the BIOS that messed it up I restarted and put in the recovery cd.
The CD-ROM sounded like it was working, it asked me if I wanted to recover. I clicked "YES". so then it continues like its going to work, but I dont notice the satus bar. I get message that there was a "read/write error" and I clicked ok. and the status bar comes up like its recovering, but nothing is being transfer data wise. so I restarted. I let the computer boot up without the recovery disk.
Now Im getting the message that theres no OS installed....
what can I do from here?
1) Buy a new OS, because theres nothing on my HHD?
2) The original Partition is gone which is why my recovery CD isnt working?
3)Something is wrong with the CD/DVD drives (both didnt want to work, although the DVD did not recognize the CD)?
Any help would be Appriciated!!!
     -Omar777

[Boca]

Maybe this can help you. I know I can't.    http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

[Politically Incorrect]

Go back into BIOS and check your boot order, it should be set to something like:
1: floppy
2:cd/dvd
3:hard drive
4:removable

Or something like that all are different but it sounds like to me your hard drive isn't on there. Try changing your boot order to make it boot from the hard drive first, if that works then that was probably the issue.
I would recommend that after seeing if that was the problem to go back into BIOS and change your boot order to boot from the hard drive second and leave the cd/dvd set to boot first.

[jimcooper1]

Sounds like a Hard-Drive error.. As PI says it is either no longer listed in the boot sequence...unlikely if you made no BIOS changes... or the Hard-Drive has suddenly developed a physical fault.
Check in the BIOS that it is being detected.. if the BIOS can see it then the error/fault is probably in the boot sector....but as you have tried to do a Recovery and it can't find the data on the Recovery partition I would suspect the whole hard-drive.

It may be as simple as a loose connector...power, IDE or SATA. So first check all your cables.

Regards

Jim