okay here's the deal. Yesterday i walk up to my computer and see the logon screen, funny, i thinkl. Because i was just on and don't remember logging off. Whatever i thought, so i logged on, while it was loading my settings it said that this copy of windows xp needs to be activated. WTF!! i thought, i've had this computer well over a year and already activated it long long ago. Whatever, so i activate it by phone. Computers working great everythings cool, well then last night my sister is writing a research paper, and midway through typing the thing restarts. She gets the message:

ntldr is missing
press ctrl-alt-del
to restart

restarted several times with the same prob. The other problem i'm having is that i've been told that if i have my bootable windows cd i can boot from that and copy the files i need over. But, i've got one of those moms that puts things away and then forgets where she put it. Or throws "junk" away. So no xp disk anywhere. I'm thinking that this is due to a virus. Thats the only thing i can think of as i have not changed anything about my computer hardware wise, or installed any programs etc.