Advice please, Dell Win XP Home won't boot; .dll errors

[HappyH]

My mate's just off the phone his pc won't boot, gets messages when it tries to boot about missing dll files. He's not got a system recovery disc, tried a Spotmau disc he's got but won't let him repair XP. He's got some photos on there he ain't backed up & would really like to be able to recover them in case he has to format/re-install.
Any suggestions please for repairing his XP home or recovering the photos?
Thanks in advance,
HH

(my thought was Hiren's boot disc but not sure if that's similar to Spotmau)

 

[ManofScience]

to repair it - he'll need an XP Home Disk that matches the serial he will have on the base unit.

to recover the files, get a 'LIVE' CD os, there's 1 of XP on hiren's bootCD - that will allow him to access the file system and get off what he needs onto a USB hard disk/slave hard disk