Windows didn't load, even in SAFE mode

Hope the following may be of use to others.

A friend's PC would not boot XP Home Edition, even into Safe Mode. Last Good Configuration option wouldn't work either.

We then used the Install CD, went into Recovey Console and did a Checkdisk /R. That didn't solve the problem.

Decided to rebuild XP but there were no backups of user files nor Outlook Express Folders and Address book. So, reformatting C and re-installing wasn't an option.

So, we re-installed XP as a second Windows right into the existing partition. We ended up with 2 XP's - the original in the WINDOWS folder and the second in what we defined as WINDOWS2.

We could now boot into the new XP. We then simply copied the user files and Outlook files onto a Flash drive, for backup.
We then thought about reformating the drive and re-installing Windows again. But first, we tried deleting everything in the old WINDOWS folder. We managed to delete everything except one little file whose attributes did not allow us to delete. So, we just left the old WINDOWS folder with that one file in it.

We used MSCONFIG's BOOT.INI option to elimininate the entry for the old Windows. We could now boot automatically into WINDOWS2 without having to select between the good and bad Windows entries during startup.

At this point we stayed with the WINDOWS2 install to see if everything would work. It did. We restoredthe user files and the Outlook Express stuff from the flash drive, re-installed a couple of programs and away we went. So, far all is well.

This might be a thought for anyone who was foolish enough to not backup their own files and then faced a total loss of everything if they rushed into deleting the old partition, reformatting the drive and re-installing Windows.