Where are all the files?

Hi all,

I have a client who called desperate for help. She has WinXP Home on a portable Dell Inspiron. The disk started making noise and then she could not boot.

I got the machine and sure enough, when I attempted to boot, I got the message “No Operating System found”.

I then used a Win98 boot disk and checked the files on the drive. There were a bunch of directories and files, but I could not find any of the operating system files. No WINNT or anything similar. I could not find the Documents and Settings directory, so I can’t even restore her files …

So I am confused. How could it disappear? Where did they all go?

Any ideas/suggestions?

thanks

Nate