I still have a Windows partition on my PC because at this point I don't know how to do everything in Linux that I can do in Windows (also, although OpenOffice does support most MS Office documents, some things show up a little funny went not opened with MS Word). Anyway, I messed something up in Windows (accidently deleted some system files when playing around with the partition in Linux), and I need to do a system restore. My PC came with a system restore partition, but if I do a destructive partition I know it will reformat my whole hard disk, deleting my Linux distro I have installed. I wanted to know if a recovery (non-destructive) would alter my Linux partitions at all. Thanks.

a non-destructive recovery should leave your linux partitions and files and stuff intact...it won't reformat your harddrive, just reload the xp back into the xp partition...you might have to reinstall a bootloader if you were using one...