I have a machine running XP Pro and it used to run fine for the last... well, at least 2 and a half years. Now is booting up, I get the black screen showing Windows logo and the progress bar, but when the time comes for the desktop to show up, the screen switches into sleep mode, like the pc is switching into power saving mode.

The boot sequence still goes ahead I assume, as the HDD makes the usual noise for some time ( up to 1 min) and then nothing. I do not have another screen to test. Video card is an old FX5200, I did not try the integrated graphics yet (it just occured to me it might be the video card, but that boots up OK).

When booting from floppy, there is a:, there is c: with some files loaded there by the boot sequence and that's all, no other HDDs (I have 2x80Gb), no cd drive, no nothing... I have keyboard control and I can go into the BIOS.

I will re-install XP if is required, but before that I need to recover the data stored on the HDDs !!!!!! Could be the MBR damaged? If that's the case, I think is not too much I can do, right? Should I put the c: HDD in another computer and try to save data from it ? (not to boot from it).