PC Crash

Nefisher

Can anyone give me some advice on recovering photos, music and e-mails etc after my pc crashed due to a possible corrupted registry. My restore disks never worked but I have the option of a system restore with a partisioned disk but I understand that will cause everything to go!
My son had recently changed things and was using Office for e-mails and had put a lot of his work onto the PC.

I have been told to remove the hard-drive and get an enclosure for it and run it of another PC. However not knowing what I'm doing will be a problem, I have been told that photos and music should not be a problem to recover but that programs that had been installed would not be availale.

I would be extremely grateful for any advice.

Nefisher

albertross_2

It might be easier to fix it in situ, depending on what the problem is..

What is the error when you start up? What caused it?
Do you have a standard XP disk available? Can you get into safe mode (F8 at boot).

Donnie

If you can access the HD, you can start with this software; http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

Browntoa

a linux boot disk like ubuntu will allow you to boot the PC for the CD and then burn photo's etc off to disk even if Xp does not work, then we can look at a Xp repair ??

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/GetUbuntu/download?action=show&redirect=download

Nefisher

Albertross,

It loads up so far and then restarts, if you leave it it continues to start/restart for as long as it is on.I don't have a disk, the ones created don't work? and I cant use safe mode as it goes into start/restart as well.

Thanks for those who have offered advice so far, I may be offline for a day so it might be a bit latter before I can reply again.

albertross_2

Can you borrow an XP disk?

If you have access to another computer, you can download 6 windows XP floppies, which should give you chance to do a chkdsk c: /F/R

also, remove anything that you don't need plugging in, usb stuff etc. to see if it goes any further,

If you have access to another PC with XP and SP2, you could create a bartspe rescue CD.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

or there are the linux options mentioned above.