No.. it is not destroyed.
Your Install apparently pissed off WIN.
Win from Dell or HP (Some others) partitions the HDD and puts a DIAG
partition in there for Remote Assist from Cust Support (India) should you
need it
Ubuntu assumes that the Partitions are Logically OS, Diag and Free
Your HDD is FULL, has only 2 parts and Now has 3.. so your BOOT.INI file is
pointing to the wrong partition now

Should look like this (Ubuntu prob changed disk() or Partition() values ;-)

[boot loader]
timeout=30 << << This is amt of time before OS continues with defaults
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS << << This is where WIN
is on New HDD It is the DEFAULT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
To fix: Boot Knoppix or similar Unix-clone CDROM
Unprotect the HIDDEN, SYSTEM Boot.Ini file
Edit the Boot.Ini file
Save the new Boot.Ini file
Done.

To REPAIR a corrupt WINDOWS install....
Press F12 at boot time and HOLD it
Select Safe mode
Select Last Known Good

-or-

Press F12 at boot time and HOLD
Insert GOOD, Valid OS CDROM
Select Boot from CDROM or (L/R Bay)
Select Install Windows
Select Repair current installation
continue, ans Q&A for ~30 min
Reboot
Done.

could he also run boot & nuke & start from scratch with a clean hd??

Not if he/She doesn't want to permanently lose everything.

Son says to use/rerun GRUB, Linux boot manager, or run GPart (Linux
Partitioning software) to fix this. Windows is trying to boot Page x, and
is pointing to page y.

I just do not understand why they do not put HP-UX on HP computers.

just a thought, u might want 2 try spinrite & c if hd is ok. i hav been putting
810 on friends boxes 4 awhile now. only prob i had was like u, froze during
part. only thing that worked was dsl live. ended up putting 98 back on. i think
ram was only 64----not near enough.

Go into the bios program and make sure the CD drive is the first on the list
of boot devices.

The partition stopped and now when it tries to boot from the C drive it
cannot. You must go into the BIOS and make it boot from the 8.10 CD
again. Normally the BIOS key is Esc or Delete or one of the F keys as
the post screen runs it tells you which key.

you didn't fry your computer trying to install Ubuntu, it is not a
virus! You need to get to the BIOs setup screen?
Usually using F2 when you first start the computer. Note the HP splash
screen has text at the bottom telling you what keys you need to hit to
get into bios.
I bought a Toshiba 305 that locked up with 8.04 until I turned off the
LAN card. Then it worked like a charm.
I loaded Ubuntu and then tried turning the card back on only to have
the system lock up again, simply put Ubuntu didn't accept the LAN card
so I had to leave it turned off. You will need to boot on the CD
drive, this is a BIOs call as the boot order is set in bios, so change
your boot order in bios to start with the CD rather than the HD, then
you will be able to reload the OS using the CD. My guess is that grub
may be your problem, as windows has no control over a system unless it
is loaded by the boot loader, it matters little that Microsoft has a
problem with Linux. Another question is did you give up some windows
space on your hard drive before you installed ubuntu? This also gave
me a problem when I was trying to dual boot. You will notice in other
posts, when using an older windows OS like XP, that you may need
another program to shrink the space given to windows. There are open
source or free programs listed on the Ubuntu web site under installing
ubuntu.