Computer not booting OS

About 2 weeks ago, one of the slots that the RAM plugs into died, so I moved the stick over to another open slot, and the computer worked fine. Well, 2 days ago, the computer stopped booting right, and gave me that annoying beeping error code saying that either my RAM wasn't working right. I unplugged the RAM sticks ( Individually of course ) to see which one had died ( if either had ) and it still refused to boot. Well, then I decided " what the hell " and I stick a RAM stick into the dead port and try to boot it. Low and behold, it worked... The port magically came back to life, and the other 2 ports died. Now, since that's happened, I can boot the computer, see the BIOs info going by and all that fun stuff, but when it hits the point where it's supposed to load my OS ( Windows XP, so the little screen with the Windows Logo and the loading bar underneath it ) it just sits at a black screen for about 5 minutes and then restarts the whole process.

Normally, I'd just try a wipe and reload, as I seem to recall having this problem before, and that's what I did to fix it I believe, but unfortunately my little sister has much of her school work saved onto that hard drive as well as many pictures she took and I can't just wipe it or she'll lose all the work she put towards school, and many photo's of family members on a cruise we took.

Any ideas that could lead me to the successful repair of my family's computer?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

@Wail - thanks for the info, but I have bad luck, and it's the families computer, not mine. So I can't risk doing something that may cause problems, or else I'll have to sacrifice MY computer to them. Now, I'm not trying to sound selfish, but they've somehow gone through 2 hard drives already, that computer has had to be wiped and reloaded at least 4 times in the past 3 months due to an excessive number of viruses that made it nearly impossible to even boot or do anything.

@Zerg - I don't have an external enclosure readily available, and I'm pretty poor so I can't afford one. I can on the other hand hook it up INSIDE my desktop and retrieve from there if you think that's possible to do. Though... I mean, if that hard drive isn't loading the OS on the other computer right, I'm not sure if it will read correctly inside my computer. Do you think it will?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Hey guys, thanks for the advice. I just went with putting it in my computer, and just copied those files to my hard drive. I decided I'd stop being lazy and actually opened my case up. Anyway, I copied the files, and just did a wipe and reload on that HDD, then it started working fine again...

I am going to have to teach them how to surf safely now though, because I'm up there dealing with computer issues for them constantly.

Thanks again for the advice and methods guys.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.