BSOD: Help!

[Guest]

I have Windows XP Home Ed. Windows did automatic update last night. Also
have Highspeed Internet. Computer crashed about 5 hours after automatic
update and after internet went down briefly. Tried to reboot and it would
only get as far as "Windows is Starting" afterwhich it would restart over
and over. Computer will not even go into safe mode and will not boot from
last known best cofiguration. Error Message reads: Bad_Pool_Caller STOP:
0X000000C2 (0X00000043, 0XD73F0000) followed by two lines of 0X's with eight
zeros following them. I removed all USB cables and tried rebooting to no
avail. Important documents in MS Word. I can't do Sys. recovery until I try
to recover these documents. However, I can't even get the computer to boot
in safe mode. Also, the computer did not come with a Windows XP CD. The OS
came pre-loaded on a computer purchased from Costco. I only have the System
Recovery and Driver Recovery CDs. I am not a tech (obviously). Question: Can
I make this Windows XP hard drive into a slave on an older computer I have
that is Windows 98 and try to recover some documents from it? If so, how?

 

[Silvabod]

The good news is that the "recovery" CD will not do a full installation, so
it does NOT reformat the hdd (thereby losing all its data). All you can do
is "reinstall" the original (factory) settings over the existing ones,
leaving all other non-XP files in place. You may even find most/all of your
software applications still intact and usable!

My advice (and I've done it more than once, in similar situations) is boot
from the "recovery" CD - you will not lose any files, UNLESS your hdd is
already corrupt/damaged (in which case you're already in trouble in that
area).

This will re-install XP as originally supplied. You will lose all later XP
system/security updates - will have to re-install those (and don't forget to
check the drivers too)

Assume your HDD is formatted NTFS (XP's preferred formatting). If so, W98
will be unable to read the NTFS disk/files. If you want to "read" your hdd
on another pc, it will have to be an XP pc.

Hint for the future - why don't you partition your hdd, use the new
partition to "save" all your personal files to? Provided the hdd doesn't
terminally fail, your personal files will always be accessible, they're on a
different "drive" (which could be formatted FAT 32, and accessible to W98)

Then of course there's the obvious solution - do regular daily back-ups, via
Norton Ghost or other similar prog - either to a CD-RW (or DVD-RW) or second
hdd, internal or external ....

Advice given in good faith, based on experience of several "pre-loaded"
re-installations. I'm not a "techie" either, but have years of experience,
have yet to fail to solve this type of problem. Do urge you to check the
advice, as I'm assuming "TechCo" pre-install XP similar to European OEM's,
and supply similar "recovery" disks.

Good Luck!