The only thing I've done recently is install IE 7, and this problem started soon thereafter.
Turn on system, goes thru BIOS, and curser comes up in the upper left corner and that's it.
I can get it to boot from a floppy and a CD. I'm running XP Pro, but I don't have the CD for it (wife got the computer from work). So I can't to a reinstall. I downloaded the file to create floppies to boot up if I could not use the CD. They worked, but I got to the part to install and it then called for the CD I don't have. I tried using the recovery console, and did a fixmbr and fixboot. Neither fixed my problem. but I did get to a DOS like screen and could see my C: drive. folders and files appeared to be there. The only thing I can think is that the MBR sector got trashed. any ideas?

Welcome to the PCHF waldo.

unfortunately without the windows disc, you can't repair the mbr, and you won't be able to do a repair/recovery/reinstall of windows.

It is extremely unlikely that IE7 has caused this, i'd say it was just a coincidence more then anything else.

Success! This computer came to me with only a 20GB hard drive and some software on it. One of which was Partitionmagic. I still had that drive, made it the primary and the other the slave. Used Partitionmagic to look at the screwed up one and did a defragmentation, which moved a lot of files around on the drive. I used a number of other tools, but did not really make any changes with them. I think the defrag was the biggest change I made. I went back and swapped them and it came up now. I'm doing a full AV scan now with Norton to make sure it's not that. So far, things are looking much better today.

Glad it is solved. marked as resolved and well done for posting how it fixed.

*shivers* NORTON!