Yes. Restore a backup.
I'm not trying to be sarcastic here. I'm trying to tell others that backing up your .hdd before doing ANYTHING you can't undo should be standard practice. If everyone did that, a large number of posts here asking how to recover something wouldn't have to be sent.
And of course, when you do get your problem solved, starting regular backups would be a good idea.
And now to answer your question directly: Create a new VM and install XP. Then attach the old .hdd file to the new machine. It will appear as disk D and you will be able to get at the files.
