I use Roxio's Go Back, you can find it in Nortons System Works 2003. I wouldn't mess with the rest of the system works. But it is the cheapest way to get Go Back. It will restore your computer to the last good boot (Or restore point you create) before the crash. When you boot up, after the Bios and before loading windows, it gives you a chance to restore. It also uses 10% of your hard drive for an image file, so if you have to replace the hard drive, it won't do you much good. I also use Casper XP to clone my drive, but I have 2 hard drives and the second one I use for backup. But I would reinstall XP, the drivers then Sp2, before going any farther. So far as I have seen, Sp2 gives less trouble to those who have started from scratch.

My vote is for Norton Ghost for creating backup images of your system.  Not sure about this new version 9, but maybe you can get a cheap cheap copy of the previous version, Norton Ghost 2003.  Or get an older version of DriveImage (Norton recently bought out DriveImage).  Or you can try TrueImage, which is supposedly very easy to use and can create self-booting CD's with backup images of your system.

As for rescue/boot CD's, my vote is for Bart's PEBuilder, which builds a boot CD that runs a version of Windows PE.  It's freeware and uses your WinXP installation CD and your current XP installation to create this CD.  See the forum at www.911cd.net/forums for details or www.nu2.nu/pebuilder for the actual program.