I have read about live cd's can be used to fix problems with windows, or save files. But some magic push of a button i have never read about, heard about or think exist. But maybe one of the two following links may help you:

http://www.ubcd4win.com/
http://www.sysresccd.org/

Some general linux knowledge and skills are required to use these live CD/DVD's to access the Windows partition(s) on the hard drive, and knowledge of Windows to know what to fix. Success depends a lot on what is wrong with the Windows installation. I use this approach to fix friends' systems fairly regularly. Again, a lot depends upon what the problem is.

My most frequent use of these tools for Windows systems is to make a bit-image of the hard drive, and to restore it later when the system goes snafu. When I used Windows a lot, this saved my bacon on more than one occasion, such as when the hard drive on my laptop started to fail and I had to get it replaced. I copied the drive image to a file on a USB drive, then when the replacement drive arrived, I simply restored the image to the drive, and voila! No installation of Windows was required and many hours/days of time wasting was averted.

Just my 2 cents.

Before you get into using some type of Linux live CD to attempt to solve an issue in a Windows installation you may want to come up with some more specifics on the issue. A Linux live CD may save your butt in some areas but not all.

Kaimont wrote:

I've got a friend whose install of Windows XP doesn't want to boot correctly. I often hear about magic Linux CDs that can boot any PC and fix it within minutes. Where can I obtain one of these and the skill required to use it effectively?

Sounds like you need the not-so-magic Windows XP CD. boot from that and use fixmbr or whatever the hell command it is to fix it. Once this happened to me and the XP CD method did not work - MbrFix came to the rescue.

http://www.sysint.no/nedlasting/mbrfix.htm