Hi there,

this is my first forum response ever, so I hope I'm not violating too many rules...

Here it what I would do, if this happened to me:

RESCUING YOUR DATA

You need: Another computer with Internet Access, a CD Burner, an empty writeable CD and an external (e.g.USB) drive.

1.) Go to Acronis.com and download a 30-day trial for Acronis Disk Director Suite (Home/SMB version)
2.) Install it.
3.) Run it and go to Tools/Bootable Media Builder. Follow the Wizzard to create a bootable CD with Acronis on it.
4.) On the broken computer, modify the BIOS to boot from disk, attach the external drive, insert the bootable CD and turn the computer on.
5.) It should now boot from the disk - when prompted, select to run Acronis from disk
6.) You should now see the layout of your computer's internal HDD
7.) Right-click the HDD partition which has your data, select Explore, then right click any files/folders you would like to rescue and copy it to the external drive

MAKING YOUR COMPUTER WORK AGAIN

Try to see whether any of the utilities in Acronis are helpful (Checkdisk the drive and look at the boot sectors), but what you really want is an XP install disk (doesn't need to be Compaq, but you can call them to send you a new one). With the install disk, use the recovery console (do some research on how to use it). If that doesn't work, you can have XP installed over your current installation. This should fix the OS but NOT delete you personal data.

Let me know if you have additional questions.

Jochen