Unseen Partitions,External booting & NTLDR

The pc froze, on starting up the next day 'windows did not star
successfully', then it goes into a rebooting loop [i think thats cause
by an XP setting which i did not know about], so the blue scree
disappears too quickly to read. On trying to start up through 'saf
mode' it would stop at 'mup.sys'[perhaps indicating a problem with th
file loading after it which would not display?], and reboot agai
without entering XP. I went into BIOS and tried some suggestions fro
forums about disabling USB ports and reseating RAM but no change. I ra
FIXBOOT in 'recovery console' and then on rebooting...things got worse
it said 'NTLDR is missing'. On running CHKDSK, now all windows fiile
seem to be missing except 'RECYCLED', 'NTLDR' & 'NTDETECT.COM' th
latter two I had copied to C: from a bootfloppy [which I downloade
from the net after this problem occurred, I also later copied NTLD
from a Windows XP CD]. The CHKDSK command also displays only 10mb o
space when the HDD is 30gb. I can't do a 'REPAIR INSTALL' since runnin
'FIXBOOT' and all disappearing, there is no WindowsXP being detected t
repair so 'REPAIR INSTALL' is not available.

'BOOTCFG /SCAN' from the 'Recovery Console' will also not work and i
says 'This error may be caused by a corrupt file system....etc' and
think this was also the case before I ran 'FIXBOOT' when there wer
actually some files on C: being displayed still [about 88 files
think, including WINDOWS files, when there should have been hundreds o
thousands] Windows XP setup from CD does show HDD having about 30gb wit
an additional 8mb below.

I have not run 'FIXMBR' from 'Recovery Console' as i) I'm scared t
lose files as a Microsoft article said it can mess things up in som
cases and ii) I doubt it will do anything as seeing as all windows x
files see m to have gone. I don't want to do a clean install as I'
afraid to lose hundreds of documents and don't want to lose m
applications. Have I lost everything or am I stuck in a small sectio
of my HDD and if I am, how do I get back out without making thi
nightmare worse? I have now bought an external USB Hard Drive, bu
windowsXP wont install on it because BIOS does not give that boo
option....anyway around that? [then I could at least analyze othe
HDD]Thanks, congratulations & recommendations to th
XP-expert/windows-whizzkid/partition-pro who can coach me out of thi
one.

The PC is AMD Duron 600mhz, 128mb RAM, HDD-Maxtor DiamondMax plus
30gb,Windows XP Professional

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Bluecamel