PC won't boot - advice please

I have a friend who is running Windows XP. It's a PC they had made for them by a friend.

Following his mum's iron causing a short-out which caused the power to cut out downstairs, the PC has had problems booting.

If trying to start up the computer normally, a screen pops up mpmentarily which (I think) is for the maker of the motherboard. Then a black screen appears with the windows logo in the middle and a bar at the bottom which indicates that the PC is booting up. However, the loading symbol keeps moving but the PC doesn't boot up.

If I try booting the PC up into safe mode, hitting F8 brings up the menu, but no matter what option I choose, the same screen appears. It features a list of hard drive file references, all of which feature "windows/system32/drivers/" and the names of different drivers.

Can anyone suggest:

1) what might be wrong
2) how I could get the PC to boot
3) how I might be able to recover the data on the hard drive

I am not terribly hardware savvy and certainly not a techinical wiz, so please keep your advice simple if possible.

Thanks in advance.

 

1.- The files that the operating system uses to start Windows have become corrupted.

2.- Try to boot the operating system with the Last Known Good Configuration
- Restart the computer
- Press [F8] to display the Windows Advanced Options menu.
- Select the Last Known Good Configuration item from the menu and press
[Enter].

3.-
Active@ Boot Disk is a bootable LiveCD/DVD/USB Flash Disk that allows you to boot up any computer and fix most startup and PC configuration problems.
Use Active@ Boot Disk to recover your lost data, manage HDD partitions, reset Windows passwords, make computer system backups [disk images], securely erase data and there is much more.
There are :
Active@ Boot Disk (Win Edition) and an Active@ Boot Disk (DOS Edition)

clonezilla-live-1.2.0-25.iso freeware

ERD Commander

hard to find some freewares. It´s not very my style

 

Hmmm... something might have got fried. Did it happen on a Fried-day?

If you have the XP installation disk (or any XP installation disk, I believe), you could try a Repair Install. Here are some instructions:
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
Maybe check your RAM too - take out all but one stick, and try different slots with different sticks. If you don't know about RAM, feel free to ask. Be careful poking around in the PC, too. Touch the metal case before going in there to get rid of static electricity. Make sure the power is off.