While trying to read a flashpath diskette, XP seemed to
hang and ultimately had to reboot. Now I have a looping
boot failure. XP starts to load, then crashes and
restarts, and on and on. Same when starting with last
known good configuration or with any version of safe mood
boot.

Tried to use recovery console but couldn't get past query
for administrative password, even though I had not assigned
one.

Tried a linux bootdiskette for changing passwords. This
started the screen, scripts ran successfully, found user
accounts but since administrator password WAS blank it
couldn't be changed.

Suggestions to fix boot problem? Worst case scenario on
how to try to retrieve data files before reinstalling XP?

Thanks for any ideas.

Tom Fish