Is the hard drive bad or is it some other problem?
If the drive is just flaky but still sort of working, you might be able to recover the data with a disk cloning CD like MaxBlast or DiskWizard.
If it is a hardware problem other than the drive you *might* be able just put the drive in another machine and get microsoft to get you around the configuration change. You will still be loading the drivers.
If it is just a bad memory stick, it is a quick fix and you don't lose anything.
There are a few memory tests free on the web that boot from a CD. That is the first thing I do. If you have a diskette drive it is even easier, simmtester will run off of any bootable diskette (W98 or vanilla DOS) and it is small enough to email
