ups failed to protect.. PC won't reboot

I am communicating with a remote user with a PC that saw a power failure last night...so much for the UPS with power surge protection. The PC won't reboot. She says she only sees a screen asking to select a boot device. (Floppy or DVD drive) with options for F2 and F11. F11 shows a black screen with an arrow. I asked her to try ctrl alt del --now she's looking at the bios setup screen.
She has no boot disks or copy of XP pro...Any thoughts???

 

have her open her case.. see if she can put the hard drive on another IDE port. Have her unplug any existing CD-ROM drives if necessary.

Reasoning: To determine if the IDE port that the drive is currently on has been fried.

 

Alright, I see it is somewhat functional. I would start by clearing the BIOS to defaults; it would not surprise me if something in the BIOS memory got scrambled. It's usually a jumper on the motherboard to reset the BIOS, but if the user if not familiar enough with that have them pull the battery for at least five minutes then replace it. That should reset the BIOS and hopefully be enough to clear any errors. Also while they are inside the machine have them try turning it on and see if thre hard drive spins up. They can place their hand on it to feel that. If not the hard drive may be fried. If it still won't start they will most likely need more help that you can provide remotely; at which point I would have them find a good repair shop. Good luck.

George