mspainter

Freakin' windows.

My Dell Inspiron, after a year of flawless working, crapped out. I ran tests and it says everything is running fine. boot order is alright. Safe mode gets same error message that the normal mode does. It will go to the loading screen, where it says Windows XP and the bar scrolls by, it is there for one second then i get the same error message. It's pretty much a revised blue screen of death. Its blue, but doesnt have the usual message on it. It says that I should disable all anti-virus and defraggers and restart. But you cannot do that without starting the computer, as far as i know. Also, i have a lot of data on it that i need, lots of music and movies. It sucks. Can anyone help me?

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TonyD

Sounds like you're screwed as to rebooting this installation. Do you have any way to access that harddrive on another computer? If so, get your data off of it that way. If not, I think your only option may be get on there with a Linux live cd and either burn stuff to discs or make a new partition where you can move everything valuable...I guess it depends on how much you have that needs saving. If it's more than like 3 CD's or so it'd probably be easiest to make a new partition. It's not as hard as it sounds.

Or...if you have an external harddrive (USB or something) you should be able to plug in your external, use a live CD, and just move stuff there. While making a new partition isn't hard (like I said) this would obviously be easier.

mspainter

damn, thanks. This sucks. One day it decides to just stop working. I'll get my friend with the same computer to let me borrow it so i back the data up on his external drive, and then re-install windows. Add my data, and be on my way.

That would work, right?

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TonyD

You shouldn't need his computer, just his external...but how are you thinking about getting the data off of YOUR hard drive? Or are you thinking about doing it via live CD?

mspainter

I was going to put my harddrive in his computer. Then i realised that it wouldnt work, i cannot get the files off my hd if that is were the problem is. So where would i get a live cd?

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TonyD

All over the place...there are many to choose from.

http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

You could download one of the full distro .iso's, but for the sake of time and speed something like DSL or Puppy should do the trick. They will look uglier, but for a simple task like swapping files it should be ample.

Also, just a note: if your friend's external drive is formatted in NTFS you will most likely run into problems. Linux is iffy with NTFS. If you decide to go with DSL I can try and walk you through it via AIM or something.