OK, so here is today's problem.

I've been given a dead laptop. Only thing is, I can't figure out why 
it's dead.

When you switch it on, the BIOS runs, and then nothing happens. In other 
words, the OS does not boot, nor give any indication for /why/ it can't 
boot. All I get is a black screen with a flashing cursor. (The OS is 
supposed to be Windows XP.)

Normally I would expect the BIOS to say "cannot load OS, insert system 
disk" or similar if it can't find a bootloader - but no. Normally I 
would expect NTLDR to report an error - but no. Just... nothing.

I loaded a Linux live CD, and as best as I can tell, the HD is working 
perfectly. I can see a small FAT32 partition and a giant NTFS partition. 
The latter is marked as bootable and contains all the necessary boot 
files, and much else besides. All the data is there, intact. So...??

More to the point, this laptop /was/ working just fine. And then it 
suddenly stopped working. This makes me suspicious; computers do not 
just /stop working/ for no defined reason. But I'm struggling to think 
what a computer-illiterate person could possibly do to make the OS fail 
so completely.

I did wonder if some BIOS setting had been changed which alters the 
apparent numbering of the drives or something... but no.

Obviously, I tried booting the Windows XP CD to see if I can ask it to 
reset the MBR or something... but no, Windows claims that no HD exists. 
*sigh* Windows XP has an irritating habit of "not seeing" SATA 
controllers. :-P

Does anybody have any intelligent ideas for how I can convince this 
laptop to start working again? Failing that, it shouldn't be hard to 
copy the necessary files off of it... but I'm baffled as to why it's not 
working.

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