Error Loading Operating System

[Flynn]

My kids told me the screen went blank when they were playing on some educational software. I tried to reboot but got the above message. I tried to reboot with the Recovery CD but I could not get past the admin password. Will this be the same that I had set up in XP?

In frustration I tried reinstalling XP from the recovery disk (which I gather may not have been a good idea). Anyway the problem remains the same.
Tried searching on MS website and found one unhelpful reference that seemed to indicate a BIOS problem. Googled the error message an found one of your threads on the same problem but it seemed to be dealing with people who had been doing quite scary things that I would never dare touch.
Any ideas.

[Win2Kuser]

Hi Flynn, and welcome to XPC :D

hmm, sounds like a hard drive problem...

Check your BIOS to make sure that your kids haven't changed anything such as hard drive setup etc. - Set it to Auto.

When you tried re-installing XP, did it go through any motions, or did you get the error before the XP CD loaded up?

[Flynn]

Hi Thanks for the advice.

I checked the BIOS and could not see anything unusual in it (although I did not have too much idea of what I was looking for). I did this before I got your message. I also got so frustrated that I just completely reinstalled XP without bothering with recovery mode and ended up losing everything on the hard drive (which fortunately was not that serious as the kids are the main users).
I could have tired fixmbr if I had my admin password but my PC supplier has gone bust and I was not going to pay the rates the new support company were asking. Someone later told me it was probably set to the XP activation code which was on a label on the side fortunately.
Anyway thanks for your suggestions. Next time I will try and curb my impatience and wait for your reply.