Laptop Booting Problem

Hi,
I own a HP/Compaq laptop with Windows XP on it. I am a business school student and have a lot of data on the computer.
I am having booting issues, i am not able to boot the computer even in safe mode (always ends at the file name mup.sys). It comes up to the menu screen with the safe mode options and restarts from there.
I have tried repairing with original windows xp disks but not able to.
But the original computer came with a partition that has a recovery setup but it tells me that i will loose all my data.
Please help.
Thanks.
Rajesh.