It is still spinning.... so there is hope, it dies at the windows XP bootup screen. I have run the IDE hard disk self test and it says fail buy a new hard drive...
My PC has the ability to take a second hard drive, so if I purchase a new one (which I am going to have to do anyway) can I use the original recovery CDs to put Windows XP on to the new hard drive and then try and set the old hard disk as slave and recover it that way??