Go buy an external USB2 drive enclosure for a two and a half inch drive.
You can buy one at Newegg or CompUSA for under thirty dollars. Then take
your hard drive out of the laptop, put it in the enclosure. Now, while the
OS is running in another PC, has to be XP, Windows 2000 or Linux with USB
support, plug in the USB drive. Your drive / partitions will appear and you
should be able to copy your data over to the host computer or to another
safe source, like a second USB external drive.
However, all this assumes your hard drive is OK. If the drive is broken
then this may not work. But since you made it to the selection screen it
probably is.
While your hooked up there, empty out your temp directory, you can look here
C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\local settings\temp
C:\Windows\temp
Now scan the drive for viruses with a up to date scanner, and then scan for
malware, and spyware.
Finally, select your drive in Windows Explorer, go to >>File>>Properties...
now select the Tools Tab.... first do the "Check for errors" but leave the
check boxes unchecked ... then when that is finished use the Defrag tool to
Defrag the hard drive.
If you got through all this, then you should be able to put your hard drive
back into your laptop and go. If you didn't get this far then hopefully you
got far enough to copy your data to a safe drive.
Rode
The NOSPIN Group
http://www.freepctech.com/rode/
At 11:48 AM 5/6/2006, you wrote:
I have a PC that all of a sudden, won't let me boot into XP. I get to
that screen that says that Windows didn't shut down normally. You have 30
sections to pick an option - 3 safe modes and 1 load last known good
system. I've tried all options and I can't get pass this. Basically, if i
just let it sit its in an endless loop.
What to do?
This is supposed to be my "ripping" machine, so it has lots of iPod videos
and movies I made on there, and some AVI movies for the laptop, too, so
I'd hate to lose that stuff.
