Salvage data from my broken laptop!

Goldust

Hi,

My laptop has a problem - it won't boot up any more. I should have seen it coming but it's not use crying over spilt milk!

At first it just kept trying to boot windows then rebooting over and over and now it just says "NTLDR is missing, press Ctrl Alt Del to restart" which just results in the same thing happening.

It will let me access the recovery mode and gives me a chance to recover but I will lose everything.

I've got my girlfriends laptop and a USB hard drive - is there any way I can gain access to what's on the broken laptop and back it up?

I've got no boot disc or anything, the recovery is all on a hard drive partition so it would appear that there is still stuff on the hard drive but not enough to start Windows. I could maybe boot from the USB drive? I'm just not sure what to do so any advice is much appreciated!

thomas01155

Burn puppy Linux http://www.puppylinux.org/ or any other version of Linux to a disc and boot from that then copy everything you need onto the usb stick.
Free burning software: http://www.filehippo.com/download_imgburn/

Some information on the problem here http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm
Make sure theres no floppies in the computer etc

456789

you could try running a linux distro from a usb drive http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ or from a cd http://www.knoppix.org/ or http://www.ubuntu.com/ - once you get into the operating system you should be able to access the usb hard drive and copy things over

though first see: http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000465.htm

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318728