Boot Priority issues

Yesterday I was attempting to upgrade my windows 7 RC to a later edition using

HTML:

http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/07/delivering-a-quality-upgrade-experience.aspx

Unfortunately in the middle of the update it told me that some files were missing and crashed. As a consequence of this, I was no longer able to access my C drive. It gives a error something like "C:\ is not accessible, access is denied". I can open programs and files, but I am unable to save or move anything to an external. I've tried taking ownership and taking my laptop apart to stick the hdd into my desktop, but still the same error. In a last ditch attempt, I tried to boot of my usb linux stick. But for some reason it won't boot. Its top in priority in the boot setting in bios. I even set all the other options to the "excluded from boot order" so there is only usb HDD: corsair flash voyager left, but all it does is send me to windows error recovery and I can simply start windows Normally. I know my linux boot works because its fine on my desktop where I can specify what to boot into. Also the windows 7 disk that I succesfully installed on my Desktop also can't be booted into from my laptop. I seriously need help since school starts in 2 weeks. I dled new bios thinking that might solve the problem... but then I realized I need to boot into dos to install it. FML.


Edit:Taking advantage of the fact that I can open stuff I opened some stuff with notepad and I can save as these files onto my external, but I cannot drag them over nor copy and paste...

Edit2: I think I'm able to use winrar to make an archive and directly save it onto a computer on my network. So hopefully I'll be able to back up most of my stuff. Unfortunately this is going to take 2 days just to compress and still doesn't solve my problem with booting.

 

bump... No one knows anything about this?

Slight update: I booted the computer up with the HDD removed and it finally booted from CD. So it might be an HDD problem... kinda weird tho.

 

I'm not sure how to fix this, but if your first goal is recovery you can download a distro of Linux that has LiveCD support (i.e. Ubuntu, Knoppix, etc). Burn the LiveCD and use that to boot up your comp.

From there you can run linux disk checking routines (i.e. fsck) and/or mount the drive and salvage the raw data (in case it's the MFT that's corrupted).

 

Woot first reply!
Lol, anyways. As you can see my problem besides the inaccessible data is that I am unable to boot into anything else without my hdd detached including the USB ubuntu boot stick I have.

 

Seems like a problem with your BIOS if it's not respecting boot order, have you tried pulling the CMOS battery?