laptop fucked...please help!!!

[weedguru_animal]

I travelled to Brighton today and moved into my new flat. I powered up my laptop then was delighted to be told that my wireless modem card had found a nearby link. I was surfing the net, overjoyed that i would be able to watch the football as a live BBC one internet broadcast. everthing was going better than I had expected. After an hour on the net I turned off the laptop and rode to the shops to get some mayonaise. When I returned I switched on the laptop and was dismayed then downright livid to discover that there was 'no operating system found'. i restarted many times but the same routine appeared....
'initializing MBA..press ctrl alt and B to configure'

then
a load of bullshit referring to a pre-boot sequence which I have never seen before on my laptop :
'Argon PXE boot sequence'
then the one liner that sums it all up
'operating system not found'

So, I thought 'fuck it, i have lost all my pics and letters but I do happen to have a copy of windows with me'. i tried to run setup but when it got to the stage of checking the hard drives available in order to determine where to install the operating system, the setup program shows the partition as :

38155 MB Disk 0 at id 0 on bus 0 on atapi
<setup cannot access this disk.>

And any move I make from there turns the screen blue, displaying an error message complete with this technical information:

***stop: 0x0000008E (0x0000005, 0xF74DECAD, OxF70937E4, 0x00000000)
*** setupdd.sys- Address F47DECAD base at F74B2000, Datestamp 41107c8f

Any help at all on this matter would be greatly appreciated!
if anybody has the knowledge to decipher the problem into layman's talk, please find me on lupo7777777@hotmail.com

cheers
AnImaL

PS. this was the first time I have ever made use of a wireless connection..is that relevant?

[Dakine]

You got the blue screen of death, and i assume youve re-booted. If you were using XP, and tried re-loading that, then try with an older version of windows. ifthat doesnt work, then try wiping your hard drive, and starting again. You may have been hacked(using the term loosley) because you used an insecure wireless connection you or the computer wasnt familiar with; but I may be wrong. Still, if you use wireless again, only use networks that you are familiar with, and have your firewall on the highest setting.

[JusJoe]

i think i've waited too long to answer this but alot of times when it says "no operating system found" its just a connectivity issue... you might not be able to recognize it right away because its a laptop but try to check your hardware on the laptop.. something might be disconnected

[Dakine]

Or your hard drives packed in, that happened to my old laptop.

[m3tal]

Yeah check the cables and everything, and make sure your windows xp partition is set to boot.