who has the ability too????

[Thehead]

My girlfriends computer crashed last night and it won't boot up. I believe the operating system crashed. good ole windows XP. does anyone here have the ability to get the information, all the files and stuff off of the harddrive. It's a Toshiba laptop! thanks in advance.

[DarkWolf]

Yes, good 'ol XP, cause it just crashes all the time for no reason. Never has anything to do with faulty hardware, or being loaded down with shoddy software.

What exactly is it doing when you turn it on? Does it post (the beep during bootup), does it get to where it's loading windows? Does the hard drive tick? Does it even power on?

Data recovery is a tricky issue. If the hard drive is fine, it shouldn't be a problem getting the data (unless her files are "locked" inside her profile). However, if the drive is dead, there's little chance of getting anything off it ... not without a few thousand for professional data recovery services (which also don't guarantee that you'll actually get anything).

There's also the possibility that it's some other hardware. And a good chance it could just be all the random crap your girlfriend has installed... maybe she got a virus.

[Thehead]

[QUOTE=DarkWolf]Yes, good 'ol XP, cause it just crashes all the time for no reason. Never has anything to do with faulty hardware, or being loaded down with shoddy software.

What exactly is it doing when you turn it on? Does it post (the beep during bootup), does it get to where it's loading windows? Does the hard drive tick? Does it even power on?

Data recovery is a tricky issue. If the hard drive is fine, it shouldn't be a problem getting the data (unless her files are "locked" inside her profile). However, if the drive is dead, there's little chance of getting anything off it ... not without a few thousand for professional data recovery services (which also don't guarantee that you'll actually get anything).

There's also the possibility that it's some other hardware. And a good chance it could just be all the random crap your girlfriend has installed... maybe she got a virus.[/QUOTE]

When you first turn it on the windows XP logo comes on then it goes the DOS prompt that says windows was not shut down properly and will restart in 30 sec.... Then the when it tries to restart it flashes a blue screen with some writing on it for about 1/2 a second. Then it goes back to the dos prompt screen.

[DarkWolf]

Try booting from the xp cd, and do a repair install. If that fails, try installing over the current xp, just don't format the drive. That should get you up to where you can back up her data before you format/reinstall.

[Thehead]

[QUOTE=DarkWolf]Try booting from the xp cd, and do a repair install. If that fails, try installing over the current xp, just don't format the drive. That should get you up to where you can back up her data before you format/reinstall.[/QUOTE]
thanks, i'll try that when i get home!