Laptop will boot to system setup or XP CD

A friend's Compaq Presario laptop will boot to the system setup (F10) or to XP Setup using an XP CD, but will not boot from the hard drive. Gives a black screen with a blinking cursor if you don't hit ESC, F10 or F12. There are no POST code beeps when I first start the computer. It comes up to the screen that says "Compaq" and gives you the ESC/F10/F12 choices, then goes black and doesn't respond if you didn't hit one of those choices or have the XP CD in the drive. You can ran Windows Setup from the XP CD but it doesn't help. I re-installed XP once and it did exactly the same thing when trying to re-boot. You can check the hard drive from the System Setup menu but it says the hard drive is good--but you still can't boot from it.
From the XP CD you can go to the "Repair a Windows XP installation" and run those DOS commands like CHKDSK which says the disk is good. On the other hand, FIXMBR says that the Master Boot Record is non-standard or invalid, but then it says if I proceed with fixing it I could screw up the partitions beyond repair. If I do that and it screws up the partitions, will I have to re-format the HD and start over? While I don't want to lose all his data, he can't get to it anyway, since the drive won't boot... Perhaps a re-format is in order, then re-install XP?

 

Only a thought check setup in the bios, possibly he fooled around and set it to boot from another device rather than C:.

 

I fixed it. I got his permission to format the hard drive and reload XP--he actually kept backups of his data!!! Most people, you tell them to back up their hard drive and they ask where the reverse switch is... Anyway, that worked. I think the master boot record was bad. Of course then I had to hook it up to my LAN cable and download all the missing drivers that I'd deleted... like for his wireless adapter... and put some software on it so it would actually do something. I am, in fact, posting this note using the laptop.
Keith