Xp help please

[rfisher]

Main laptop running Xp Home won't boot.

Get to the Xp logo screen, few seconds later a quick blue screen 'o' death with lots of writing flashes up but disappears too quickly to read. Then computer reboots.

Cycle repeats despite any choice made to boot to safe mode, command prompt etc.

I can get to C: drive via floppy boot up. If I run scandisk it hangs on checking file allocation table at 17%.

Using the original Xp CD and repair option I get the C:> prompt but don't know what to do next.

Really don't want to reinstall Xp as IIRC it formats C drive before installation and that would really feck up my life.

I do have a recent HDD backup but I'll lose recent emails if I Ghost that onto my C drive. If anyone knows where Outlook Express 6 saves its DBX files in Xp that would help as I could recover my emails that way.

Beers all round if anyone can help me fix this.

Ta.

[rfisher]

So how do I do a repair install?

When I select 'r' in setup to repair a previous installation I just come back to C: drive prompt.

My theory is that Xp fried a sector of FAT data on shutdown. Don't understand why setup or scandisk can't repair this from the 2nd FAT copy.

[rfisher]

Oh dear - chkdsk in recovery console says 'the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems'

Waaaaaaaaaah.