This indicates to me that you have entered the world of GRUB bash. You should have got a nice Blue background menu, allowing you to boot into a Debian Linux or Debian Linux single mode.
It could be that this is because of Boot drive orders and XP being on other drives. Not sure as you needed to post more info on the hardware you have and setup, like number of drives, types, BIOS boot sequences.
meanwhile back at the GRUB, it has a thing called TAV completetion... so if you type:
and then press TAB it should give you a list of drives ( hd0 hd1 hd....etc )
keep pressing tab.
I have just gon through something similar:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...cursor-736663/
good luck.