Windows XP re-install after mobo change leads to disaster!

Oh dear god.

Bought a new mobo and E6600 to replace my older Athlon XP. Per a thread I read here in the mobo forum, I would try to do a "repair" installation of XP instead of totally re-installing Windows.

Stupid me thought I could keep a "rollback" utility installed which hooks into the master boot record. Rollback RX in fact.

1. Booted the Windows XP disk. Went to repair current installation. That copied over some of the files on my boot HD. Seemed fine.

2. Tried to reboot. The Rollback utility splash screen came on and went. Then nothing more. No more HD activity.

3. Figured, well, I guess I should probably take this MBR rollback utility off. So uninstalled it.

4. Rebooted and still had no HD boot activity. In fact, I had some error "disk read error"

5. Tried to do a "repair" current install from the Windows XP CD again. This time, it wouldn't let me do it. Wanted to install anew onto the drive. Gave me the options of format vs. no format.

6. I thought, wait, that's funny. Let me see the menu options again. So I rebooted.

7. This time, there was no "no format install." Now it thinks my HD is completely blank and there are ONLY format options.

8. At this point, I totally freak out because as is heard too commonplace, "I have my life on this HD". I take it out and hook it into a USB HD enclosure.

9. Another computer can read the HD, which seems essentially intact, but not the user directory under Documents/Settings. Says "Access is denied." Nor can it read the c:\Windows directory, saying "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."

10. Of course, everything I really need to access is in my user directory.

Don't really care about the windows directory. Any way to access that folder? Please please please!

You might want to run some sort of diagnostics on the drive to ensure that it isn't failing.