Windows XP startup problem

[swirly]

I made myself a guide for all the trouble I often deal with, with PC's. To further expand on the Restore steps, here is what I do: (I have edited my document to make it more readible on these boards)

I showed her your list and she wrote it down. She also found a Windows XP cd which is a good sign. There is another problem though. She says:

Kat: i guess the problem im having is the select the harddrive with windows
Kat: it gives me two options to choose. minint and then some numbers. Not sure which one to pick >< maybe that means my harddrive crashed?

So it looks like windows can't find the partition correctly to me. Which would mean either the partition table is messed up or the drive itself is messing up. Currently I'm trying to explain to her how to get into bios to see if it is recognizing the harddrive correctly. So...if the partition table is messed up, is there anyway to correct that without data loss or is she looking at starting from scratch? Assuming the harddrive works at all.