Did not find any hard disk drives while trying to fix unmountable boot volume error

[rachelb26]

I received a "unmountable boot volume" error on our laptop.
We have a Dell Vostro laptop with Windows XP

When I was trying to fix the boot error, I changed the BIOS Settings to load from CD first.
Then I loaded the Windows XP CD and attempted to run the Recovery, however, I received a message saying "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed..."

What should I do next to try to fix this issue?
We hope the hard drive is not dead because we will have a lost quite a bit of information. I will appreciate any help you can provide. Thank you.

 

[Tmagic650]

The hard drive is the cause of the error. If you can't afford to lose the information, remove the hard drive and put it aside. Install a new drive and re-install the version of Windows you were using... Information on the bad drive might be recoverable by placing it into an external USB enclosure and accessing the files that way