missing operating system

[leeknight1982]

hello all.

My laptop at startup comes up with a message saying missing operating system.
my laptop does not have a floppy drive. however i do have a windows xp disk (not a recovery disk) when i put the cd in it wont read the cd and displays a message saying non bootable cd in atapi cd-rom. I have a lot of coursework in this laptop and a can not afford to lose it. any ideas on what i should do?

laptop specs. Packard bell easynote. intel celeron. windows xp.

thankyou for your time

Lee

 

[leeknight1982]

1 more thing

i have put my new hard drive in and when i put the windows xp disc in and startup it loads up as if there is no cd in the drive but i i put the recovery disc in then it reads that no problem and takes me to its set up

please help me

 

[iss]

it sounds like the XP disk you have is not bootable. is this a genuine XP disk or a "copy"?