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If Windows XP Repair installation not available...
Your options if the Windows XP Repair installation isn't available are fairly limited. Possibly the easiest is to install a new hard drive in place of the old one. As hard drives are fairly cheap these days this shouldn't be as major as it might at first seem. Replace the existing (corrupted) hard drive with the new one and carry out a full Windows XP installation on the new drive. Configure the old (corrupted) drive as 'slave' and either install it into the computer or connect it via a cheap USB enclosure. When Windows XP is up and running on the new drive you should be able to access the contents of the old drive and retrieve your important files.
If you still have no luck, for example if when you try to access your old hard drive you get an error message "Error Performing Inpage Operation" don't panic (yet). Follow the procedure below - but first be warned, it can tie up your computer for many hours so make sure you're not going to need to use it anytime soon:
Click on START then click RUN. Type 'cmd' as shown in the picture.
Click START, RUN, type 'cmd'
The cmd screen will now appear. In the cmd screen type 'cd \'. This should leave you with the command prompt C:\> assuming your main hard drive is drive C.
Now type 'chkdsk d: /r'. If the problem hard drive is something other than d: use that drive letter (for example in the screenshot below the problem drive is f:).
The five stages of CHKDSK (note that on this computer drive F is the problem drive being checked.
On this occasion no errors were found)
Chkdsk will pass through five stages during which it will check and if possible repair your hard drive. The main thing to remember when doing this is don't lose hope! Stage 4 is particularly notorious for taking hours to perform and throwing up screens full of errors. Things move slowly. Really slowly. It can take an hour for 3% to change to 4% and there are lots of reports of people aborting the process because they think their computer has hung-up. It hasn't. Be patient.
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