Copying data from crashed XP to new vista system?

There's a USB adapter that will connect your old platform XP hard disk to a USB port that will allow you to retrieve these files. You need to know if your hard drive is a SATA or IDE interface. If it's IDE, you'll need to get an adapter for that, or take it to a computer shop and they can retrieve your stuff for you. If it's SATA and you have a laptop with a SATA onboard, you can connect the hard drive to a SATA port, and a power plug from the desktop, and hook it up that way to fetch your files.