corrupted file after power disruption

[colore]

hello

I was using a software (mirc) and this software reads a txt file (script.ini) to perform some actions, it does NOT write on this file anything

but when the power of the laptop stopped, and I had to reboot, this file was corrupted (it contained NULL characters when opened with notepad)

1. is there a way to restore it?

2. why this happened? I mean, since there was no write activity at this file at all, why just reading the file got the file corrupted? is it winxp or hard disk's fault?

3. how can I prevent such failures in the future?

thanks