You could try a Bart's Bootable CD, but that does take a bit of work to
make, and requires an original XP CD (but not necessarily the one that came
with your PC) or equivalent files:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
Other alternatives include booting the PC using a "live" LINUX CD. These
will boot most PCs into some variation of LINUX, detect hardware, and will
not write to the hard drive during the booting process. Thereafter you can
copy files, even make changes to files on disk (within limits).
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php
I like KNOPPIX, because it is full-featured and has a windows-like
interface. It also has a large user community for hints and help. It can
read and write to NTFS partitions (used by XP), but its default is read
only, until you change that.
http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Main_Page
Note that KNOPPIX support USB hard drives, and that could be a good way to
salvage personal files !
As for what you do once you boot the PC, that depends on exactly what you
mean by "my computer crashed". If a minor software problem, maybe you can
fix it once you gain acess to the hard drive, if you can diagnose the
problem correctly.
But, realize that some software problems are so large that the only credible
solution path involves reinstalling XP. If you have a retail version, you
can do a "repair" installation, which will not erase personal files or
installed programs. If you have an OEM version, it may format first and
install second, so you will lose everything on C:\. Of course, these
reinstallation options assume that you can locate your XP CD.
If "crashed' involves a hardware problem, like a litteral disk crash, then
booting the PC will not help. And, if the motherboard or power supply has
problems, even a valid bootable CD may not boot the PC.
