Been using a mate's old Dell laptop for internet access. However the laptop kept freezing – a windows update problem (XP SP1). I had about 5 minutes from booting up to get stuff done – been trying to download update packs for all sorts but its stuck in a loop whereby windows updates needs IE8 to work, IE8 won't install because of some dll problem, automatic updates isn't working for some reason etc etc. So everytime it inevitably froze I just turned it off at the power button. After 7 or 8 goes it then decided not to boot up at all, just get an error saying "Cannot find boot device I/O" or something. Doesn't give me chance to get into setup or anything.

So, is it totally screwed? Mate doesn't know yet that its bust so if I can fix it beforehand it might be useful…

sounds pretty hagard to me.
if you cant get into bios, your stumped i think?
you probably dont know if it has a secondary boot setup? whereby, if it cant boot off the harddrive, it tries to boot off a floppy/cd/usb stick instead.

if so, putting a boot disk in, may allow you to get onto it, but dunno how it would let you repair it?

if there is important data on the hard drive, it should be pretty easy to retrive, if the laptop does turn out to be shagged.

good luck!