Life-saving Live CD?

[Fireblend]

I was wondering what was a good Live CD to use for when, for example, a XP-only computer didn't want to boot but the harddrive was still untouched (to back-up files before reinstalling or something). I know this can be done with Ubuntu's, but I wanted to know if there was some Live CD specially designed for this to make the mounting process much simpler. If you know of any I'd really appreciate it.

Also, I don't even know how to do this with Ubuntu's live cd, so if you've got a link to a how-to or something I would also appreciate that, I like to be prepared for emergencies like that :p

Thanks in advance!

[Pragmatist]

There are many such LiveCDs out there. Knoppix was one of the first LiveCDs, and was pretty good the last time I used it. You can easily find out about liveCDs by searching on google linux:
http://www.google.com/linux

Here is an article on how to use the Ubuntu LiveCD for such purposes:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LivecdRecovery?highlight=%28livecd%29

[smoker]

if you would like a windows live recovery disk?

if you have a copy of an xp install cd, you can make your own legal windows live-cd for recovery, backup, of windows systems, etc. see this link for all the details:
http://www.ubcd4win.com/