Ok, here is my issue. My computer just recently got into a situation where it was booting in a loop; it would start the windows xp screen, then go into a reboot; it would do this endlessly. The computer was old, but the HDD was fairly new, so I decided to buy a refurbished computer and load my files into that. I bought a usb external kit, to hookup the old HDD; when I set it to boot off of the usb, it would boot the same way, in a loop. I was thinking that it was the motherboard that was the issue, but I guess it is the HDD. Now if I plug in the HDD into my usb while booting off of the HDD that is in the computer I get "local disk F"; I cannot explore this disk, it gives me an error. I also get "new volume G"; I can explore this disk, but I can't find any of the windows registry files and it looks like most of the files on the disk are missing. The hard drive was partitioned, with the recovery files on the other partition. What I am looking to do is replace the boot files if I can. I don't have a recovery dvd. Can anyone assist? Thanks

Sorry, I forgot; I am running windows XP and the HDD is a WD 500GB SATA 3; Model# WD500AAKS. Thanks