OK, this will make about as much sense as writing with the eraser and blanking it out with the pencil. I would write an elaborate explanation of the situation that occurred but I do NOT have any. What I can say is... I had a hard drive failing and was removing files to place them on another drive... including a windows installation. For some reason i was unable to repartition or format the drive so I had to delete the system files by hand, and hadnt been able to get them all... but MOST were gone (such as the windows system folders and most of the contents therein), and still had yet another fully funtional partition on another drive with XP on it... WELL, I had some hardware issues with my install of Kubuntu 7.10 and reinstalled it in my typical multi-boot configuration, and when I chose the option to go back to windows xp for some gaming... my "deleted" install of XP was the one booting! The one I deleted everything from, system files and whatnot. The install that was previously functional IS still there, but will not boot. The one I deleted everything from was working perfectly again... And all the files were restored as if I never deleted or moved any of them! Is it a fluke, or did somehow kubuntu repair it? I have 24 years experience using and building computers, but I have NEVER heard of this happening, let alone actually witnessed it!

Is it possible that somehow Kubuntu repaired it?

It's impossible to say what actually happened without more information.

Candidate explanations:

1. You deleted the files from a different partition than you thought
2. The partitions have somehow become re-ordered. Exactly how Windows decides what is c: d: and so on is not clear to me. Perhaps this is sensitive to whatever changes kubuntu made to the partition table, so the drive names in Windows have swapped over, causing some confusion
3. Weirdness

Lets see... No, I did delete the ones I thought I deleted. The partitions seem to be in the same order as they were before, as I labeled my drives very specific names to tell them apart and theyre exactly where they should be (other than the separate drive I just installed for more storage space). I myself, lean towards weirdness, as I have no even theoretical explanation to give anyone, and it didnt do this until I installed kubuntu again... it just makes me scratch my head even more the more I think about it. The way I was able to identify the windows install that I had deleted the files from, is that it was the media center version of XP and the one that was SUPPOSED to be working was plain jane XP pro.