XP Pro - black screen with blinking hyphen - boots with Hiren's

I've been working on an old XP laptop  (HP Compaq nc6000) that crashed. HDD has some hundred bad sectors, but when it boots with Hiren's it must be possible to get it to boot without Hiren's

The error came after I used TestDisk to write MBR code.

I managed to fix the problem in the VM I have running, I did exactly the same procedure on the laptop but the error remains.

The windows installation disk now recognizes the Windows installation, I can log onto it in the recovery console. I've identified the key as a volume license, 640, I don't have any media for a repair install. Tried, got invalid key.

The key on the laptop sticker is not the same as the one in the system.

The fix in the VM was XP Mini - BOOTICE - PBR Process - NTLDR boot record.

I found this:

Problem solved. The solution was to boot Hiren's CD, load mini-XP, and then run BOOTICE.

Select the XP partition, select the NTLDR option under "Process PBR". It didn't work. Next I tried "Process PBR" with the BOOTMGR option. Bang! Windows XP is now booting!

Don't understand why that worked, haven't dared to try it.

The HDD is failing, I guess that explains the problem and why it worked in the VM.

...actually, I was about to post the same thing. Glad you got it figured out.