Is there any possibility that I can recover my XP installation from my Maxtor
hdd that has just failed.  i.e. a application that can access the drive in a
'gentle way' just to recover any data on it before I bin it?

I have a Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse installed on a WinXP pro system. USB
style connection with a USB/PS2 adapter and mouse is in the mainboard's PS2
connector. The mouse cursor moves erratically jumping from the current
position to the top of the screen and sometimes ...

Just a comment, but this being the second time I've been faced with a two-day
marathon trying to repair/reinstall XP onto an SATA disk/mobo combination,
that perhaps it's time Microsoft and the hardware-designers both got their
brains into gear over this.