HP will not load Windows – restarts

I have an HP Pavilion 8770C that will not allow Windows XP Pro to load. It was running and after some brief power outages, it will not run. I am in need of repairing the boot(i guess that is the problem)and not losing any information on my HDD. Will the Recovery Console work? Or, is there something else that I can do besides backing my work up to prevent this panic from happening again?!? :)~ It is not the unmountable boot volume…or atleast the blue screen of death is not diplayed. Basically, the computer starts, goes to the options of normal startup,command prompt ect ….and then goes to the XP pro screen and then restarts itself and this continues.