XP blue screen and computer won't start. Need help recovering the data

Hi guys,

I'm trying to fix my Mom's computer. She was apparently on the phone with the internet company this morning regarding her email and they had her do some stuff(she just said restart) and now the computer loads a blue screen after the windows loading page. I don't get how the internet provider/Mom combo can manage to crash the system, but that's another can of worms.


It says windows did not shut down correctly and gives me a few options; safe mode, safe with network, last known good config, and start windows normally.

None of these work. They all lead to the blue screen that says:

I can reinstall no problem, but that will wipe all her work files and would be a disaster. So, I guess I'm asking how I can get to those files and back them up on another hard drive and then proceed with the reinstall.

I thought a dell tech came to the house years ago and reinstalled windows on the D: drive and was then able to pull the data off the C:? Is this a viable option?

She might not have a D: partition anymore though, I reinstalled a year ago or so and I might've lumped everything into the C:


Any thoughts would be great. Thanks

 

Recommend trying Puppy Linux (small ISO) that loads completely into RAM, mount the hard drive (windows) and your external drive and simply copy and past the files over. Have used on mine when XP screwed up and also when my hard drive crashed. You might also want to try repair install with the XP CD.

 

Thanks. Another person recommended ubuntu which seems fairly straightforward.

I could try the repair, but wanted to back up everything first incase something goes wrong.

 

Ubuntu Live CD.

 

This is a relatively easy problem to resolve if you did not disable system restore though last known good configuration probably should have worked.

How you go about fixing it depends on your version of Windows...xp of vista?

 

I used ubuntu to save all the data and I'm in the process of a reinstall right now. I highly recommend this program and would use it in the future. The step by step guide I linked also makes it dummy proof.

It's XP, but yeah, last know config wouldn't load and there is no way to get into windows to activate restore. I have no idea what they did to the computer.

 

Once you have access to the XP CD, pop it in and try the Repair. It should get you back up and running w/out losing any files. I've done it before!