I think that basically your MBR (master boot record) is screwed up.  I had a tri 
boot PC  ( XP Pro, 2000 Server, SuSE Linux) and after deleting Win 2k Server partition 
on the laptop to save space by using Partition Magic this error appeared.  Not wanting 
to lose all the information on the laptop on the XP partition...

I did the following...

1)I tried to reinstall XP with the product CD by putting it in the CD drive restarting 
the computer and waiting for it to load up with different options.  I think Install 
is the choice you want to select even though you are just reinstallilng... you don't 
want the recovery console option (yet).. You want to install XP with the option of 
leaving the existing file system in place (in other words you don't delete the entire 
Windows partition but probably just overwrite the existing Win files with new ones. 
 This will rewrite your Windows files (by default I believe that they are in C:/Windows 
unless you did an upgrade from 2000 where I think that they installed under C:/WINNT 
by default).  Take the CD out as it should have copied the files needed to install 
and restart.  When I restarted the laptop it still didn't begin installing the operating 
system.  If it doesn't then you need step 2 shown next...

(2) Put the product CD back in the tray and restart and this time pick the Recovery 
Console option.    Recovery Console is the closest that you get to the old DOS diskette 
for utilities.  If you do a HELP /? then you see the commands.  FDISK is now DISKPART 
 and FDISK /MBR is now FIXMBR.  It will ask you which Windows partition you want 
to do the recovery console on.   So you should see a list of installed Windows installations 
(you will probably pick the first one since by default Windows will install to the 
C: drive first.  You may be asked for an the password for the Adminstrator user account. 
Next select the partition and you enter the recovery console.  Type DISKPART at the 
command line and you may see something like I did which had an unsed partition first 
of about 8MB then another small partition listed perhaps using the FAT, FAT32 or 
NTFS file system, then your large Windows installation partition.  Now you know your 
partition layout!  Next type FIXBOOT at the command line and then type FIXMBR.  Restart 
the computer with the product CD removed and hopefully it should begin installing. 
 I deleted all partitions after my WinXP partition while in the DISKPART area but 
this shouldn't be necessary as the main reason why the error originally occurred 
is because the MBR was whacked which shows among other things I believe where on 
the hard disk to start to look for the boot program so that you can begin the loader. 
 If you use Linux then you may need to reinstall GRUB or Lilo loader since reinstalling 
Windows this way will overwrite the MBR for the Linux load. 

*** Note that before doing step 1 you may want to just try step 2.  This is because 
if you have installed a service pack and updates... then I believe that you will 
need to install them again after reinstalling but I just wanted a fresh install of 
Win XP so I did step 1 as well. 

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