MINI HP WIN XP 32 no longer boots up on its own.

I went to bootdisk.com

Got a boot disk for WIN XP 32

burned CD

placed CD in EXTERNAL CD drive

In MINI's BIOS, I asked for the boot order F9 and F10 thingie so that the pc would boot from the portable CD drive and

I then ran the file from the portable ASUS...something...CD drive but nothing happened...

MINI kept coming back to the BIOS

I don't know what else to do

MINI will NOT boot and I've two files I desperately need to get out of there so reformatting is out of the question.

Help?

Pweeeze?