Recently, My XP will not boot. During startup, it'll give me a blue screen(like this one: http://pics.scripting.com/0051/0004.jpg)..or the screen's colors will be mixed up. Tried safe mode..with no results So..i stick in my xp cd and try to do repair like i've done before..however, it doesnt recognize that I have xp on there anymore!!..It just thinks I have some partitioned space. Thus, it doenst even give me the option to repair. Can I just go into the recovery console and run fixboot or fixmbr? It's important that i wont loose any files. Ram Vennam

In your situation, anything can happen, 1st thing to do is save your info. Slave it to another HD/comp ( no need to bolt it in, just cable it & leave it outside the case ) & copy your stuff onto the other HD. You may have a choice of jumper settings on the master HD, such as master with slave or ms.

Johnw's suggestion is the best start (if you have another hard drive to play with (it is probobly the quickest way to back up your data)as fixboot may work but then again it may not and if the boot file is not the proboblem then rewriting it could make thing's worse (or at least harder to diagnose) And if you cannot boot then backing up to another harddrive can be a painfull experience for an inexperienced user ... Better yet if you do have your XP install disk then reinstall windows on the new harddrive and slave the old drive to the new one then pull the data off the old one then try to fix the proboblem on the old one . There are many reason's why a system will not boot (and usually it is one of the last thing's you did that is the proboblem)more info is needed .

Try what Iambigepants said backing up files is a good idea you`ll never know when you need that backup!Note:you might like to save files on that backup hd like if can`t boot again and it might over write files on normal HD.