My laptop came up with the wonderful blue screen of death and now when i start up it gets as far as the acer screen then goes black. if i leave it for long enough it says that it can't find<windows root> \system32\ntoskrnl.exe and i should install a copy. which is all good and well but i don't know how to do it. i've tried booting from the xp disks but it asks me for the recovery cd and then spits it back out again. is there anything i can do? am i doing something wrong? i have absolutely no experience with computers-i'm just trying my best to fix it...any suggestions (explained as clearly as possible!!!) would be appreciated!!!

Safe mode last known good configuration
That is press F8 repeatedly on Windows Startup until you see the Safe mode prompts

Failing that you could try a Windows Repair option