XP to rescue my Mac, but how?

Greetings, All,

OK, here is the problem:
My mac just refused to boot up today. It hangs on the startup screen.
I can, however boot into my windows partition, using XP.
I need to get my Mac back, but before I start monkeying around, I want to back up my OSX partition from XP, the only system I can boot into right now. I am away in a very remote place right now, and have limited (think dialup speeds, but sometimes slower) internet, and no access to my original Mac install CD for booting to Disk Utility. I've tried resetting PRam, booting with shift down etc., but no joy. Can anyone suggest how to backup the Mac partition and or create a bootable CD for disk utility? I tried "EASEUS Todo Copy" so far, but it would not do the job. That is all I've tried so far.
The details - MacBook Pro 15" bought in Late April (i5 processor) running the absolute latest version of Snow Leopard on a 500 GB HD. I have a couple of thumb drives, access to blank CDs, but not DVDs. One blank 750 external HD USB2. Almost no software installed on the XP side. Getting the original OS X disks sent to me would take about 3-4 weeks (to run Disk Utility), and I'm hoping to find a solution before then. (and hoping it isn't a hard drive failure, but XP works fine).

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.

Cheers,

Tyler

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I can select the Mac Boot partition fine (it boots to that default as it should), but the startup hangs after putting up the apple logo and I get to watch the spinning pinwheel of death until I force the machine off. the only way I can get any system up is to boot to XP.

Cheers,

Tyler

OK,
Did the command-s thing and ran "/sbin/fsck -fy"
did it 2 more times until it told me everything was A-OK. Rebooted, same problem.

I'm not sure what verbose mode is but willing to try.

Tyler

if only I could cut&paste....

OK,

Here is what verbose mode gives me. can anyone see the error here?
I'll skip some of the stuff for ease of typing...

First, it does a lot of stuff that looks ok, then:
Got boot device = IOService:/AppleACPIPlatformexpert/PCI0@0/.....
and the next line is:
BSD root: disk0s2, major 14, minor 2
jnl : unknown-dev:replay_journal: from: 33481600 to: 6050304 (joffset 0x15502000)
then some USBMSC Identifier stuff, then:
jnl: unknown-dev: journal replay done.
com.apple.launchd 1 com.apple.launchd 1 ***launchd[1] has started up.***
com.apple.launchd 1 com.apple.launchd 1 ***verbose boot, will log to /dev/console.***
Bug: launchctl.c:3557 (23930):17: ioct(s6, SIOCAIFADDR_IN6, &ifra6) != -1
Running fsck on the boot volume...
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-491.3~2).
fsck_hfs: Volume is journaled. No checking performed.
fsck_hfs: Use the -f option to force checking.
launchctl: Please convert the following to launched: /etc/mach_init.d/dashboardadvisoryd.plst
BCM5701Enet: Ethernet address ...........
AirPort_brcm43224: Ethernet address .............
IO80211Controller::dataLinkLayerAttachComplete(): adding AppleEFINVRAM notification
IO80211Interface::efiNVRAMPublished():
systemShutdown false
NVDANV5HAL loaded and registered.
AGC: 2.8.68, HW version=1.9.21, flags:0, features:20600
Previous Shutdown Cause: 3
DSMOS has arrived
AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 1 (unspecified).
AppleBCM5701Ethernet: 0 0 setFixedSpeed - logic error, speed any?
en1: 802.11d country code set to 'us'.
en1: Supported channels 1 2 3 4 5 6 ....................
Auth result for: 00:1d:.............. No Ack
Auth result for: 00:1d:.............. No Ack

Then all ends right there. note, where there are a buch of periods, it is listing the ethernet or airport addresses, or the supported channels (long list)

Soooo...
Cany anyone make more sense out of this that I can? Do I need to list all the stuf that came first as well? I'm hoping this means something to someone.

Cheers all, and thanks for the help so far.

Tyler