[someoneiusedtoknow]

Sorry if any of this insults your intelligence.

Have you tried changing the BIOS to boot from the CD first, or possibly only? What do you mean by 'doesn't pick up'? Do you get any errors? Are the h/d and CD drive listed in the BIOS still?

Also.. what did you do with your laptop before this happened? Install anything, change any settings? Is it possible the hard drive's f*cked?

NTLDR is (if I recall rightly) the loader for XP and the MBR should point to it, so either your BIOS isn't recognising your hard drive, your hard drive's dead, some other hardware issue, or uhmm something's wiped or edited the MBR e.g. if you've repartitioned recently.