I have a recording studio in my home.  Computer based with a PowerSpec tower, AMD 64 (3.2Mhz), Cakewalk Home studio software,  MidiMan sound cards (3 for a total of 12 simultaneous tracks).  I put it together one layer at a time testing functionallity at each level and it is an awesome machine.  

It's only use is studio, it's not on the net.  We used it last wednesday an it was perfect.  Sunday I went down to edit some tracks and work on a mixdown,  I pushed the power button and a DOS screen came up stating the XP would not start correctly, and offered 5 options.  Safe mode, Safe with command mode, Safe in network mode, last succesful start, or normal start of XP; none of which work.

I don't know much of XP,  on ME I would put in a start up disk and run Register fix or register repair.  But alas there is no DOS start up disk, and this tower doesn't have a 3.5 drive.

My guru friend says we should put the hard drive in a "hotbox" and dump it down to and external, then look at fix the errors, that way probably, we won't lose any files.

Time is of some importance, and I get tired of counting on friends to bail me out.

some additional facts are, I believe we hade a brown out sometime between studio session, as the modem, network hub and computers had to be re booted.  ALSO a 9V DC power adapter on a piece of gear blew a diode.  That's an unusual event.  DIODES are pretty tough.

any thoughts would be appreciatedYou can easily hook it up as a slave drive in another machine and backup your important data. There will be jumper settings on the HDD pay attention to these.

Then Travel Here and follow the instructions for a "repair" install of the APPROPIATE version of XP.

This will retain your programs and data however i would highly suggest BACKING up first.

patio.   8-)