XP Start up loop

[Guest]

Have an IBM Desktop with XP that may have gotten turned off in the
mid-program. When I hit the start button XP blue bar screen starts up, then
goes to a black screen with "sorry windows was not able to start up.... and
gives the options:
Safe Mode
Safe Mode w/prompt
Last known normal start up
Normal mode
ect."
Each on defaults back to the XP blue bar start up...then black screen in a
loop.
Microsoft told me that they don't support factory loaded software
IBM told me to go to their reload screen, with no other options, but I have
some photos that I do not want to lose...
Anyway to get around losing data? How do I solve this problem?

 

[Rock]

Have an IBM Desktop with XP that may have gotten turned off in the
mid-program. When I hit the start button XP blue bar screen starts up, then
goes to a black screen with "sorry windows was not able to start up.... and
gives the options:
Safe Mode
Safe Mode w/prompt
Last known normal start up
Normal mode
ect."
Each on defaults back to the XP blue bar start up...then black screen in a
loop.
Microsoft told me that they don't support factory loaded software
IBM told me to go to their reload screen, with no other options, but I have
some photos that I do not want to lose...
Anyway to get around losing data? How do I solve this problem?

One way to save the data is to put the drive as a slave drive in another
XP or Win2k computer and copy off the data.

Always have a current, full and complete backup. Data loss is not an
issue of if but when.

 

[Guest]

I was just lazy about backing up...damn. How do I do the "slave" operation?

 

[Rock]

I was just lazy about backing up...damn. How do I do the "slave" operation?

:

First decide what IDE connector is available in the other computer,
either slave on the Primary channel (the boot hard drive would be the
Master) or on the Secondary channel as Master or Slave. Then check the
drive's documentation for setting the jumpers on the drive you want to
install and set accordingly. YOu might have to remove one of the other
devices if all four are used. Note: you also might have to change the
jumpers on the other device attached to that IDE channel as well. Cable
it up with the power cable and data cable and boot the computer. It
should be recognized in the BIOS and assigned a drive letter by windows.
Remember how everything was set up in the first place so it can be put
back the way it was. Then change the jumper setting on the old drive ti
what it had been and put it back in the original computer. Do the
recovery.

For backup there are some good solutions out there that make it easy and
automatic if scheduled. One is to use an imaging program. This makes
an exact image of the partition which can be saved on CD/DVD or to
another drive - internal or external. Imaging to an external USB 2.0 /
Firewire drive works well. Then occasionally burning an image to DVD
gives you redundancy. Restores can be done of the entire partition or
individual files / folders. These work well and make it easy to recover
from a drive crash. Examples of this are:

Norton Ghost 10
Acronis True Image
Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows
CasperXP

The second option is a traditional backup program such as Stompsoft's PC
BackUp or Sonic's Backup MyPC. These are good tools - the the evolution
of ntbackup. There are other good backup programs out there as well.
This can do a complete backup or backup individual files and folders to
DVD/CD and other drives.