computer burned by surge

[autodidact]

There was a car accident in front of my house and they hit the power pole and knocked the neutral wire off which caused every bit of my electronics to receive 240 volts.
Problem: I need to get a new computer,but I want what I had on the old drive if it didn't get fried ,not Vista! If the old drive is ok can I put it all on the new drive without having Vista on the computer that I buy? I don't want double boot,I just want what I had before, XP Pro with Media Center. Reason I don't want Vista is so many people on this and other forums don't like it and some ask how can I go back to XP?
If you say I can how do I do it? Is Vista as bad as some say?

How can I tell if my monitor still works? can I try it on the new computer without any harm being done?

[liambl]

So you are buying a new prebuilt PC? And you want to use the old HDD, if it still works, to boot XP MCE? That most likely will not work unless the new computer has the same hardware as the new one. If it is different, Windows will not load as the hardware is different than it expects. Yes you can possibly connect a monitor to test without any damage, but there is a chance for damage. You can just turn the monitor on without a PC attached to test that it will turn on though.

[glc]

You can still buy computers with XP if you don't want to build your own. Order one from Dell.