Hi guys, how can I repair windows XP w/o lossing any documents - my friends computer doesn't boot, its says system boot not found or something like that and it wont boot.
Can you tell how to do it step by step or a website where I can get info. Thanks...

Hi goodboy,

Do you have a XP CD? If so boot to it. I think its the 1st screen after all the drivers are loaded it will ask you If you want to Install or Repair select R for repair and thats about it.

pop in your XP CD, install over the old one without formating, nothing but C:\windows should be lost. Create ya new users, the old users files will be under C:\Documents and Settings\ Creating new users of the same name wont delete the old profiles. If i remember rightly the new ones will have slightly different folder names, like "pcname.username" instead of "username". You wil probably need to take ownership of the files with an admin account, but then you can do what you want with them... I would suggest back up and full reinstall/format.

another idea would be to take out his drive, place it as a slave in ur pc, grab his files, then just format/install windows on his hdd.. id say go with the second idea, simpler and less things could go wrong..

Boot off the XP cd, and at the *second* screen, after the licence agreement, it should show your Windows installation and ask if you want to repair it, hit 'r'. If you do this at the screen before (the first one), it will take you to the recovery console, in which you can't do a Windows Repair. And if you do a strait install, you can lose your Documents and Settings folder, too. A Windows Repair, done through that screen is completely non-distructive.

Guys, you have been of great help - Thank you all... Every thing went fine and I repair.