It appears that either your Master Boot Record or your drive index has been corrupted or your drive has bit the dust. It seems like the computer is not finding a viable OS that it can boot from.

What was the last thing that you were doing with the computer before this problem appeared? Did you have some sort of problem (i.e. crash or freeze up)? Or did you shutdown the computer normally and next time you went to start it up this happened?

If it turns out that it is just your Master Boot Record or drive index getting corrupted, then you might be able to save your data just by hooking it up to another computer or hooking it up to another computer and using some sort of file/drive recovery software such as Data Rescue PC. If the drive has bit the dust, then your only possibility might be an expensive data recovery service that can physically rebuild your drive such as DriveSavers.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

Not that it necessarily changes the situation and is more out of curiousity...could anyone else have used the computer while you were gone? In otherwords, do you live with someone else who could have been using the computer and had some problem and is just to scared to tell you about it or something like that?

Or was there any severe weather while you were gone that could have cause some sort of surge that damaged the computer or such?

Just trying to see if we can spot something that might have caused the problem (other than spontanious death of the computer...which is possible)...if so, then we might have a better clue as to what the root problem might be.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

I would try hooking it up to another computer. If you have access to another desktop with an open IDE or SATA spot (you did not mention if it was a IDE or SATA drive), then use it and see if the drive will mount on the other system and if you can get the files off. If so, then it just might be that the master boot record was scrambled some how (which would tend to suggest that something happened while it was on). If you cannot get to the files (i.e. will not mount in Windoze), but the drive shows up in Drive Management and a program like Data Rescue PC will show the files (you can get a demo of the program and it will at least tell you whether it sees the files and if it believes that it can recover them), then that would tend to indicate that the drive index is hosed (which again would tend to suggest that something happened it the computer was on). If the drive won't work at all...won't mount in Windoze and will not show up in Drive Management, then you might be outta luck except from something like DriveSavers (this would tend to indicate that the drive itself is toast, which could happen when the computer is on or off due to some sort of electrical surge or such). If you don't have another desktop to use, then you can either use an external enclosure (which you can get from NewEgg) or an adapter like this.

Once we deal with whether or not you can get your files off and what it takes to do that and maybe have a better idea of what the problem is, then we can assess whether it might be OK to reformat the drive and re-install or a new drive is in order.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]