Need some help please...

I was updating a PC because it only had SP1 for XP. So I popped in my SP2 install CD but something apparently went wrong. Normally I would only install SP2 on a fresh install of XP but I was lazy and didn't feel like reformatting the drive and starting from scratch. My own stupidity.

Now when trying to boot up into Windows, it shows the XP loading screen but then the screen goes completely blank and all you can see the mouse pointer. Nothing else. I tried rebooting several times, I tried booting into safe mode, I tried popping in XP and doing a repair install, and it still doesn't work.

I don't have any spare hard drives at the moment, so I might go out and buy a small drive tomorrow and pop it in as the master drive, re-install XP from scratch and the switch the current drive as a slave to backup the documents, but I'd like to avoid having to do that.

The current drive has 2 partitions, a C and D drive. So what I was thinking about doing was to do a fresh install but not delete the D partition. Every time I've re-installed Windows, I've always formatted the drive and deleted all of the partitions and created new ones so that things would be as fresh as possible, so I have no idea if I can just select the C partition, format it, and re-install XP without even touching the D partition.

Does anyone know if I'll be able to access the D partition after doing this so that I can backup the files and documents on it? Or will the D partition need to be formatted also? Kind of a noobish question, I know, but as I said I've never even tried doing this in the past so I'm not sure how this will pan out.

Any thoughts?

I always just format the C drive when installing Windows and have never had a problem with accessing or getting data on other partitions but hubbardt os right about having to reinstall any programs you installed on D