With out any warning my hard disk would not boot. Thank God I had a BART bootable CD with XP on it. It booted and repaired some sectors and then the hard disk could boot.

I immediately got a utility called Miray HDclone that made a image of the old disk on a new spare hard disk.

It took 4 hours +- but it worked perfectly and the new disk booted.

I am sticking with XP as long as I can.