Please do not panic. Your data is probably fine. Even if your hard drive
is physically damaged, the data can probably be retrieved - although
not without considerable expense. Do nothing - including a Repair
Install - until you retrieve your data. I'll give you various ways to
do it but they all require having another computer, some equipment, and
some computer skill. To answer your last sentence - computers are
extremely powerful and complicated machines. Sometimes fixing them is
also complicated. If you don't have the skill to do what is necessary -
and only you know the answer to that - then take the machine to a
professional computer repair shop with experience in data recovery.
This will not be your local version of BigStoreUSA.
Here two sections on recovery your data, one for an undamaged hard drive
and one for a damaged hard drive. From reading one of your posts, I
would say there is a good chance your hard drive is damaged but there's
no way for me to be sure. You were pretty skimpy on the details.
A. From a physically viable hard drive:
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
B. From a physically damaged hard drive:
*IMPORTANT* - If there is any question that the drive is at fault - it's
making noises for instance - and the data is crucial DO NOTHING FURTHER
ON THE DRIVE. Every time you spin that drive up you may be destroying
data. If this is the case, send the drive to a professional data
recovery company like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data
Recovery. General prices run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers recovered
all the data on a failed laptop drive for one of my clients and it cost
$2,700. He thought it was worth the money; only you know what your data
is worth. I understand that some insurance companies are now covering
data recovery charges under "Loss of Intellectual Property" so check
with yours.
Drive Savers -
http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services -
https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/
Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
