Windows Xp Mess! Help!

[teddy]

Alright- sorta long situation.

I'm trying to recover data off of an old Windows 3.1 Hard Drive. I stupidly connect it to another XP computer's IDE and pretty much break everything. Looks like the registry and boot sequence to the XP are fried. So now I'm just trying ot save my own hide and get the XP back to working. I think it may have been an ME to XP upgrade also.

So I try XP repair things and it says the drive is corrupted. I try chkdsk and it says "looks fine", chkdsk /p says "unrecoverable errors", chkdsk /r takes an hour or so to run and completes saying "fixed one or more places". Now the XP repair is visible again. Goes through copying the files and then "setup will resume after restart". But then it does nothign but go right back to the beginning. IF I choose repair, it says "Setup has already attempted to upgrade" and asks if I want to try again.

Now I'm stuck, and facing the horrible option of copying salvaged data (which is visible on a working comp), totally reinstalling XP, and telling the people that they have to reinstall everything. Not good. Thoughts? Advice? Any help would be awesome.

ANOTHER SITUATION:

"paging file is too small" business. I go into the virtual memory setting and change the customized settings, but the computer never seems to care. It always sets 256M as the paging file amount. I put the minimum at 573 (the recommended) and it doesn't care, right back to 256 next startup. I tell it to set it automatically (which apparently should set it to 1.5 times the RAM amount, so 1.5 times the 384 in there = 573). No dice. It seems to have its mind set on 256Mb.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out or suggest someone/where to ask.

[purewaveform]

try going back into the repair, and make sure you repair the MBR that way you might get to clean off bad data. As for it not restarting, that is microsoft, and you will need to hit them. As for the data, BartPE is great, allows good access, also can diagnose problems on the hard drive and has CD burning support to get data off. BartsPE also has some tools that might help you fix windows. Also check the boot.ini to make sure that it is pointing to the right spot. As for recovering the data from the Win31 drive, spend 30 bucks and make it external, then just plug it in. Getting XP recovered shoudnt be too bad, if recovery will run, you fix the MBR, and the hd has marked the bad sectors, then it should come back.