Making a recovery disk

Alright boys, i ran into a bit of a problem.

My GF informed me that her friends computer was "completely broken" and "wouldn't always start" and that she would like me to look at it.

Now, i love troubleshooting these kinds of things, and playing around with broken computers (and i know a bit about the basics) but what I don't know is what i should put on a cd rom to take with me.

I was thinking a knoppix live cd, and running things from there, but i don't know if it will have what i need.

Alternately, if i can get the damned thing to start up, i can install spybot/adaware/nod32 and run them in safe mode.  Again, not too sure how to tackle this one, especially considering i don't quite know what i'm looking at problem wise.

Do you guys know of any specific disks that are out there for use in these situations? I'm Assuming it's windows xp, but my gf wasn't sure, and the girl in question is in the hospital (the computer is at my gf's house)

I'd reinstall windows, but i heard there was new security updates and such?

I slipstreamed sp1 onto an install disk, so that "should" work, but again, not too sure.

Any advice?

Knoppix is your best bet IMHO, although your easiest option is probably to back up her user data and reinstall the OS, then install all the stuff that newbies need to avoid getting eaten by viruses.

Maybe you should try booting it and using it yourself before you try to "fix" anything, considering you don't know a lot about the problem(S)?  If your girlfriend doesn't know a lot about computers, I'll bet you that it uses Windows XP or Windows 98.  Or even Windows ME.

There's something called BartPE that you can use.  It builds a live CD with Windows XP.  There's some licensing issues you need to be aware of first (which are outlined on the BartPE site), but it's quite versatile.

As for slipstreaming, you can use a tool called AutoStreamer to help you slipstream Service Pack 2 to the Windows XP CD.  You could slipstream it manually, but the tool makes it easy.