Compaq Presario 12XL401 / Win ME used to freeze up at random
intervals.

I decided to make a system restore with the factory CD but all I got
then was "Error #29" and after that there's "missing operating system"
on the hdd. I tried to fdisk/format the hdd but the hdd would only
format up to a certain % and then exit saying: "format not completed".

The laptop boots well from a bootable CD of FDD, but it doesn't see
the C: (hdd) anymore.

Any thoughts on what to do next are highly welcome.

Al