Glen said:
Hi,
I have a laptop i have been updating and when i was installing xp home
edition service pack 2 it crashed with a runtime error. It warned that xp
might not work properly now. The only thing i could do was reset BIG MISTAKE!
When it restarts it starts with the blue load line but then resets and can
not go any further!
Is there a fix for this without formatting and reinstalling as the person
who owns the laptop has 7 years worth of files stored on the machine but not
backed up anywhere else!
PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!
The first thing to do is retrieve that data. You should have done that
*before* doing a major operating system upgrade, not to mention that the
owner has been sadly negligent.
It is completely possible to retrieve data from a machine that can't
boot into Windows. Here are some ways:
1. Pull the drive and slave it in a computer running a working install
of XP. Depending on the target drive's characteristics, you may need a
drive adapter; i.e., laptop-to-IDE or a SATA controller card, etc. A
usb/firewire external drive enclosure works very well, too. Use the
working Windows Explorer to copy the data to the rescue system's hard
drive and then burn the data to cd or dvd.
2. Often XP will not boot with a slaved drive that has a damaged file
system. In that case, boot the target computer with either a Bart's PE
or a Linux live cd such as Knoppix and retrieve the data that way. Here
is general information on using Knoppix for this:
You will need a computer with two cd drives, one of which is a cd/dvd-rw
OR a usb thumb drive with enough capacity to hold your data OR an
external usb/firewire hard drive formatted FAT32 (not NTFS). To get
Knoppix, you need a computer with a fast Internet connection and
third-party burning software. Download the Knoppix .iso and create your
bootable cd. Then boot with it and it will be able to see the Windows
files. If you are using the usb thumb drive or the external hard drive,
right-click on its icon (on the Desktop) to get its properties and
uncheck the box that says "Read Only". Then click on it to open it. Note
that the default mouse action in the window manager used by Knoppix
(KDE) is a single click to open instead of the traditional MS Windows'
double-click. Otherwise, use the K3b burning program to burn the files
to cd/dvd-r's.
http://www.knoppix.net
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ - Bart's PE Builder
Now, as to your issue - what does "only thing i could do was reset" mean
exactly? What did you actually do? Since you didn't back up client data
first, can I assume that you also didn't do any preparatory work before
attempting to install SP2? You also need to truthfully assess your level
of computer skills and if you are just helping out a friend, it would be
best at this point to take the machine to a professional computer repair
shop. This will not be your local version of BigComputerStore/GeekSquad.
I say this not to offend you but only to be practical. Give more details
about the computer itself and we will see if we can untangle the mess,
but this may be impossible to do without having hands on the machine.
Malke
