Blue Screen no F11 option??!!#?!#?!?#!!

Ok I am loosing my mind so I will keep this short.
I had a fatal crash with my A31 today.
The blue screen.
I tried everything I could think of.
Restarting
Restarting in Safe mode (every type of safe mode)
Booting off of a MS disc
tapping on F11 and then decided to reformat and reinstall.
Well the first attempt of reinstalling (F11) worked but I got a fatal blue screen again so I figured I lost everything anyway do it again.
Well I tapped F11 and began yet again to reformat and reinstall.

Well this time it reinstalled and stopped.
Now I have a C drive with nothing on it and when I turn on my machine I don't see the F11 option any more.
All that happens is I get the following message:
Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key.
There is no disk (other then the HD) in the unit.
I have a floppy (empty), and a CDR (empty) so I don't know what to do at this point.
I know IBM or should I say Lenovo wont be able to help since the unit is about 3 years "or so" old.

Can anyone help me to get the F11 back???
I have gone into the BIOS (F1) and it is there but grayed out.
Only the F1 option and F12 option are black.
Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks
JW

 

Invalid system disc sounds like a hard drive failure.

 

Well I began to think about taking the laptop apart to see what it looks like on the inside, thinking that there myst be a problem with the HD or something.
Yeah, kinda not the right troubleshooting methodology, but hey it works for me.
Anyway I first took the CDRW/DVD out of the laptop body, since it's a swappable unit that was pretty easy.
I then noticed that the CDRW/DVD was pretty hot, to a point where I put it down on the table.
I turned the air conditioner on and held the player in front of
it. (high tech stuff huh!)
I figured hmmm let me run with this s bit, so I then place the
CDRW/DVD back into the laptop and tried again to install Win XP Pro, but this also proved to fail with the CDR101 DriveX
unavailable message.
I took the player out a second time and again it was steaming hot (maybe not steaming).
I setup a table in front of the A/C and turned it on to max, re-
installed the CDRW/ DVD and began to run the recovery Cd's.
Wouldn't you know it windows setup went 1,2,3, even the IBM apps setup without any problems.

So;
Problem #1: I blowing a fuse / bulb, and probably created a slight surge in power that corrupted the C:\windows\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys file which windows kept
telling me it could not find, or use.

Problem #2: I must believe that the partitioned recovery portion of the HD was corrupted somehow.

Problem #3: The CDRW/DVD was over heating, so when it got to a certain temperature it lost contact with the system.

The 3 problems have totally nothing to do with each other, but were revealed because of each other.

When I attempted to install from the HD it always stopped at a certain point, and gave me the blue screen of death.
Since the win setup never completed the BIOS was never triggered to release the hold or freeze of the restore F11 option. (like stuck in a restore loop)
So by deleting the partition I lost the F11 option, but gained
approx 40% of my HD...
Thats not a bad trade off since I had the recovery Cd's (glad I
made IBM send them to me in the very beginning)
Lesson learned:
This tech stuff is fun, and I think I will make a set of backup
Cd's for my tablet for future excitement.

What next new adventure am I in store for me??????????
Hope you found this entertaining.