You can read NTFS just fine, just don't write to NTFS.

As far as recovering files from Windows XP; about 3 weeks ago I used Knoppix to rescue our Windows 2000 server with NTFS and a software mirror that other professional paid for recovery products could not handle. The software mirror, NTFS, and the SCSI drivers caused problems for every other program. We had a few minor read problems, but nothing major..

As far as "dangerioius", even the people that wrote the NTFS driver don't recoomend writing.

Just use knoppix to recover the files to a FAT 32 USB "Jumpdrive" or copy the files over a network to aother comptuer. If copying to another comptuer that other compter writes NTFS and Knoppox just copies the files to the other comptuer and that comptuer handles the NTFS writing.

That is what we did the last time. setup the messed up server on Knoppix and the other computer with an NTFS drive and copied the files "accross the wire".

Getting Knoppix to talk with Windows on a network etc is a little confusing so I suggest reading other related threads and try it out before you have a problem. That is what took us the longest on our recovery.

hope this helps....

Alan