[andrewas]

Sounds like your HDD is dead or dying. Trying to repair it is risky, if its on the way out it could die completely, taking your documents with it. You could try to re-install windows on it, but if it is dying, you could end up losing everything. If you havent already.

Safest thing to do would be to transfer it to another NTFS capable machine and copy your documents over. Under windows XP, the folders you want are probably under c:\documents and settings, unless you saved them somewhere else.

Then you can put the HDD back into your own machine and try and re-install windows. I dont think it will work though, this looks very like a dead HDD to me.

In that case you'll have to RMA the drive and get a replacement.