Hi everyone.
In the last days i experienced a big trouble with the stored data on my c partion of a maxtor 160gb hdd.
The problem occurred and started with a strange crash when i was simply exploring a directory in win xp 2005 media center.
When i saw the screen freezed i tried ctrl+al+canc but this caused a reboot of system instead of the task manager's window .
When the system rebooted it showed an error about a file missing or corrupted in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM.
I tried the restoring console from the install cd and i typed chkdsk with no additional parameters and sorrily a random systemroot command in c:. The chkdsk found one or more irreversible errors in the hdd and apparently stopped at 50% when showing the right capacity instead.
After the reboot of the machine the error message changed to a missing or corrupted HAL.DLL.
Then the problem is, since i really can't lost my data guiltily having no backup of my data, that i can't even type dir with a good response from the OS, the data seems invisible even from another win xp installation on a new harddrive.
The hdds are sata, and i can't have them to work as slaves on my machine because of i haven't slave ports.
From my researches the problem seems to be at least in a corrupted MBR, how can i restore my data on another hdd?

at this point i'm about to try some of these solutions:

1.Knoppix to get the data from the raw partition (because it says -raw- in xp)
2. Trying a program like getdataback

Please help me also with instructions if needed, thank in advance at least for reading my crying about this.

bye.

Waht do you mean exactly by this "and sorrily a random systemroot command in c:." ?
As a first step go start > run > bootcfg /rebuild
If that works run chkdsk with switches /F /R

Try the Knoppix CD- you may very well be able to access the data through Linux. YOu'll obviously need some backup media to rescue the data to, but Knoppix should automatically set up networking and CD-burning for you, so those are two options. Knoppix probably won't be able to do much in terms of repairing your Windows install, as Linux has very limited support for writing to NTFS-formatted volumes.

Just FYI:

1) "missing or corrupted \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM".

The windows\system32\config\system file is a component (called a "Hive") of the Registry, and yours appears to have become corrupted. The hives are unique to the system on which Windows was installed, so you cannot just replace them with copies from another computer.

* Booting into the "Last known good configuration" might do the trick, although it often doesn't. It is the easiest fix though, so it's worth trying.
To boot into that configuration, start tapping the F8 key right after your computer starts up (that is- well before you see the Windows startup graphic/logo). This should bring up the boot options menu, where you can choose the "Last known good" menu item.

* There are a couple of other ways to fix the corruption, which are discussed in these links:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_sys32.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545/en-us


2. Hal.dll-related errors can be caused by a few things, including a pooched MBR or a corrupt boot.ini file. The BOOTCFG, FIXBOOT and FIXMBR tools available through the recovery console on the XP install CD may fix the problem. More info here.