I'm with you on that. When Windows won't boot properly or at all, there are a few Linux distros specifically designed for such situations. Two that I know of are:

http://ubuntu-rescue-remix.org/

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

There is also the very handy GPartEd Live CD (based on Linux) for editing drive partitions and file systems.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/