Can't get past start start up screen

This all started with with a call from my kid saying his lap top wasn't working &
swearing He " didn't do anything to it". rolleyes

It is a Toshiba Satellite A105-s4064 laptop running XP media center 2005.
Wife tried to get it running & installed the restore disks. After running the disks the computer would start but won't get past the message ( missing file \ ntoskrnl.exe). After reading a couple posts on here today, I decided to try running the restore disks again. I got thru the first disk ok, But in the middle of the 2nd disk I got an error message that I wish I wrote down but said some thing about a unreadable AOL file & to hit OK to continue. When I hit OK it spit the disk out & shut down the computer.

When I restarted the computer, It will go to the start up screen & posts a message saying that " ntldr is missing" . When installing the recovery disk the recovery wizard gives the error message " the tool can not get HDD physical info".

My questions are can I fix it, should I fix it or should I just shoot it.
thanks for the help.
John

 

I would check that the laptop has not been dropped, as that often happens when it has.
It also is a bad sign that the hard drive has, or, is failing.
REMOVE THE BATTERY
REMOVE THE HARD DRIVE COVER.
CHECK THAT THE RIBBEN TO THE HARD DRIVE IS SECURE, IT CAN BE WORTH REMOVING, AND REFITTING IT.
REPLACE HARD DRIVE, AND COVER AND TRY AGAIN- IF THE LAPTOP STILL CANNOT SEE THE HARD DRIVE-BAD SIGN- POSSIBLY DIED.