unaccessable boot sector

i was havin problems with my hard drive freezing up and had some erratic behavior going on. i down loaded some of the recommended spyware and virus removal tools. every program said my mach was clean. now when i try to reboot i get a blank screen with error message. i did not get a chance to copy what is said but it started with unaccessable boot sector (i think). there was also a string of numbers = 0.000007000. something like that. i have never experienced a crash before and frankly i am at a loss as to what to do. some of the programs on the hard drive are "borrowed" and i do not have the software to reinstall. i have heard of a proceedure called ghosting that would allow me to recover the programs and copy them on to a new hd. i was running windows 2000 professional. i would like to be albe to solve this problem without the expense of a computer technician. what should i do first?

 

thanks man, i'll give that a try and let you know how things turn out.