After running many applications, blue screen error 'beginning physical kernel dump' continued to hang so I did a hard reboot. Perhaps this was the stupidest thing to do, since it rebooted with blue screen error 'stop 0x00007B (ox81836930)--inaccessible boot device'. Computer will not reboot in safe mode, nor to prior good config, and clicking sound is heard when Windows is loading.

Is still there a way to access content of the harddrive still or is this a purely physical collapse, where nothing can be done?

you could move the harddrive to another computer, just make sure if the partition was NTFS it has to be a comp with either NT4, WIN2k, or WINXP, so you can recover your info, and then do a clean install.

BSOD/screen dump 'usually' means a re-install.

Things you can try:

Run setup (CD boot or the 4 floppies etc.) and choose the Repair option; it may work - but I'm doubtful.

If Repair fails to resolve, run setup and choose Upgrade current installation; it 'may' work.

If neither the above work then install parallel/second version as:

c:\winnt-2

and this should allow you access to drive contents. It will probably list faulty version too in boot.ini; ensure default OS to boot is new/second version; delete original version (winnt) from drive; edit out any reference to it in boot.ini; reboot to verify second version is still OK (it should be); empty recycle-bin and defrag drive; install all apps/utils afresh for second version. Make ERD and keep safe/current (up-to date).

Other route - allows access to data etc, but does not rebuild system:

If drive is fat32 then use a '98 bootdisk to access data; if ntfs then use ntfsdos util (sysinternals.com) - freebie version will allow read-only access to it. But you still have to re-install/recover a working W2K afterwards... for which the third of the above routines will help (without wiping the drive totally).