I need a non-linear video editor compatible with Windows XP, and unfortunately my budget are the few coins rattling in my wallet. Thanks for any and all suggestions!

If you can afford it, the best video editor I've ever seen, let alone used, is SpeedEdit from NewTek, but that costs several hundred dollars.

I would go to http://SourceForge.net and search for "Video Editor" and see what comes up!

You can also search http://VideoHelp.com/tools for Video Editing programs that are freeware...

A quick search on my Ubuntu (UNIX) "Add/Remove Programs" shows the following as GNU, nonlinear video editors:
Pitivi Video Editor
Open Movie Editor
Kino
Kdenlive

I've not used any of these. And though they are on UNIX, there is a strong chance that they have also been compiled for Win32 machines.

(And... downloading Ubuntu from http://Ubuntu.com , you can boot from a CD into Unix, do the work there you need to, and then restart in Windows when you need to go back... [or make an Ubuntu external HD, or dual-boot partition if you're techno-savvy. :)

Jahshaka looks promising... some users on VideoHelp mentioned crashing issues, but it looks like it is at least worth a look...

http://jahshaka.org/About

"HyperEngine-AV" is old (2006) but it also looks like it might be promising...
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hyperengine/

Looks like it might be a good thing to explore a bootable Unix system (you can even get/make persistent "pendrives" that boot to Unix and let you still see and work on your internal, Windows HD,) for video editing... looks like there is much better and more stable free, non-linear video editing packages available for Unix than for Windows...

Unfortunately, I have zero budget and my spare hard drive and thumb drive both died. :/ Maybe there's a linux emulator for Windows ...

I'm sure it would work under VMWare (or most other VirtualMachine code)

Cygwin provides a Linux environment for Windows, complete with X (windows/graphics) support, which is as close as you'll get to a Linux "emulator". But you'd have to compile the program from source, and most people aren't up to that.

I've used Jahshaka, and it sounded good, but I didn't like it. Perhaps it's matured since I used it, but it didn't have a good interface and it was very hard to use.

A while back when I was looking for a nonlinear video editor, I ran across Kdenlive. I never tested it myself (I went with a commercial product that came free with my DVD burner instead), but it looks very promising. They even have a LiveDVD image and a Virtualbox image you can download.

I'm not really up to date on how well Virtualization software performs (I've heard claims of near real-time performance with the right hardware), but it seems to me that if you're going to be rendering video, it'd be more efficient to do it on the host OS (i.e., if you're using a Linux tool, boot into Linux). But it might end up being the choice between saving a few minutes of render time or saving the trouble of installing and booting Linux, so it's up to you.

It's not a very good system (it lacks a lot of features), but most PCs come with Windows MovieMaker.

With a lot of imagination, even this can be made to do a good bit of work.

Most of my work from 2005-2007 was done this way and I got quite a bit of recognition for it!

Not sure. In XP (the OS I still stubbornly use) it's in the menu under "accessories." I've seen it in both Pro and Home versions. It may not come with Vista, though.