xp unistalled itself?

[Sorry for my spelling mistake in the title, "xp uninstalled itself"] Hi I switched my laptop on earlier today and returned to find it runing a system scan disk thing. It has/had xp installed on it. As I was in a rush I tried to switch the laptop off during the scan. I know this was stupid but I needed to quickly e-mail a document and was running late for an appointment. I then found the power light flashing a little. After taking the power cord out and plugging it back in, this stopped and it began charging the battery. I then switched the laptop on to find it show the NEC screen followed by a blank black screen. It remains on this for anywhere between 15seconds to around a minute before the laptop shuts down. The system won't let me run a Boot on the network. Also when I change the BIOS setup, the changes don't save. One extra issue is that the laptop has no floppy drive and the dvd drive may not be functioning (it didn't before this issue). i'm an idiot but would greatly appreciate any help. Thanks

It sounds like a definite hardware problem with possible software complication, the motherboard/bios battery should save changes in bios, but if your laptop battery or charging circuitry is failing anything is possible. It might be time for a trip to the shop or a new laptop.