XP won't load after splash screen

I've been on holiday. I come back, the PC is buggered.
The one that used it while it was gone said my (unused and uninstalled) D-Link wireless network card popped up and installed, but asked for the CD. They turned off the computer, and thats all I know about that.
Ever since, it won't boot up past the Windows XP Splash screen. I've tried a repair off of a Windows install disc, and a Linux live disc can read (although not write/copy from) my NTFS partitions, so I can't easily back the stuff up without wasting a fair few DVDs, and a lot of time. Before going to the XP splash screen it also brings up the boot menu, giving options for Safe mode, Safe mode w/ networking, Safe mode w/ command prompt, Start windows normally, and Start with last known working settings, none of which work. It just reboots after the splash screen and loops around like this till I do a hard reset.
Windows will not boot at all.
Looking for any help before I lose a fair amount of unbacked up stuff through reformatting.

Just noticed its most probably a software issue, but the hardware seems to have died to begin with. Ah well.

how much do you have to backup?

Got a bunch of games, TV, films etc I'd like to keep. About 125GB or so.

so you can't copy, but you can burn dvds? If you are capable of copying, I would get another drive and set it up as an external. a little expensive, but you have the drive afterword. you could also get the smallest cheapest drive you can and install it, then install windows to it, and go in and move everything off the other drive. maybe you can borrow a drive from a friend or something. another idea is that there is a way to fit windows onto a pen drive, you are going to have to do some research on that one, but I know it is a possablity. my guess is that if you can find some way to log on in windows, you will be able to copy your stuff off.

Knoppix (Linux live) can read the drive and burn DVDs containing the data from it, or so I've heard.

I'm looking for an easy way out to a crappy problem, if its available.

I've been reading about the problem, and it seems like a complete arse. Found a fair amount of people with similar "won't load past here" problems, none of them with a definite or working solution that I've tried so far.

Yep happened to me a couple days ago and I tried everything. Idk if u read my thread but I was actually able to get into safe mode and I backed up everything I needed on the few DVD-RWs I had left. Too bad I lost over 20 gigs of games and movies that I didn't have enough DVDs for...

If you've got an XP disk matching your existing setup you can reinstall XP.

Proceed as if you are installing a fresh copy, but do not erase or format any partitions. Select your existing partition as the place to perform the installation. At the last moment it will ask you if you want a completely fresh installation or upgrade an existing one - select upgrade and your system should be restored to a working condition, but with all your software still present and installed.

Before you reformat or reinstall, since you can't be sure exactly what he was fooling with, go into the bios and reset defaults. When you restart the computer hold the ctrl key incase he tried any overclocking and screwed up, this should cause the card to go to defaults. If you can't get into safe mode to remove the network cards drivers you might try removing the card from the PC (if its not an onboard card), this will prevent the necessity of these drivers loading.

I fixed it, still not sure what caused it, but it looks like the hard disk got corrupted somehow. Could have been a bad shutdown.
I installed Windows onto a seperate hard drive, (windows install disk would not recognise the old hard drive in the boot install, even though the Linux disc did). When the new Windows installed, it ran a chkdsk automatically on the hard drive that wouldn't boot. I rebooted again, loaded up the old drive's copy of Windows.
Lucky I had another hard drive to do this before I killed all my data and boot record through the BIOS SATA controller.