ZortMcGort11

After looking inside the Ubuntu machine I noticed that it has different cables/connectors for the hard drives. SATA, I believe. Definitely not the IDE cables that both my WinME computer or my friends XP computer have. Well, I tried :-) This could be the best solution. I will look into it, thanks :-)

It's fine, no worries. I appreciate the help :-) Made a lot of progress this evening on my friends poor computer! So that's good. I can at least tell him it's not his monitor :-) I only have a Puppy Linux live cd on hand.... and I'm on dial-up, so can't download anything at the momen. The Ubuntu machine is an install courtesy of a different friend of mine... his attempt to get me off Windows ME :-) I want to get working on this... but I have to drive my sister and her friends to the bar downtown. So I won't be back for an hour or more. That is, If I don't stay out drinking and listening to music with them :-) But thanks Tommy for your input :-)

I'm not as worried about my Linux computer, so I will try hooking up the hard drive to that machine. If something went wrong, I would rather screw up my Ubuntu machine than my "priceless" vintage Windows ME computer :-) I'm just a newb when it comes to Ubuntu though.

I don't think the drive works, it's practically inaudible, no noise like it's spinning. However it did start making a scary clicking, grinding type sound... I promptly removed it because I didn't want to ruin my computer. As soon as I heard that noise I shut down my computer, but then it was really slow, and it was like almost frozen, and then it went to a blank black screen and sat there... I was like, "oh man!" But thankfully my computer is fine. I don't have access to any NT Windows computers. I got Windows ME, and I have a newer Ubuntu machine, if reading from Linux would make any difference.

Sorry, pic is a little blury. You were 100% correct, Tommy. Thanks for suggesting that, because I could've been messing around with hard drives and stuff for hours. There's a total of 9 of those capacitors, all right next the CPU, and they're all fried. They look like exploded batteries. Only out-of-the-ordinary thing I could see from looking at it. I'm pretty sure that's the cause right there. Too bad really. But would that also ruin the hard drive as well? I couldn't access the drive at all using NTFS reader... I guess it just took out his whole computer. Bummer :-(

I did a close visual inspection of the motherboard, and I did find something that looks bad. Some serious corrosion, or buildup of stuff on some transistors (?). They're right next to the CPU, they almost look melted or like an exploded battery. There is several of these. All the other ones on the board look shiny and normal. I'll attach a pic in a second.

Another thing I noticed when his computer is turned on, is that I can't even open the DVD Rom drive. I was going to put my Windows ME install CD in there, just to see if that would boot.

I installed his drive into my computer, DiskInternals says the drive is 145.9 Gb, but other than that I can't access his drive. I click on it, but the program just does nothing. I'm going to install my old Windows 2000 drive into his computer. Could be that his XP drive is toast. Well, my hard drive with Windows 2000 didn't work on his computer either. Something is weird. I don't get any error message or beeps when his computer starts. Can't get into the BIOS either :-/

My friend's XP computer stopped booting several months ago. His computer turns on, the fans blow for the CPU and power supply, but that is the only sign of life it makes. The screen doesn't even come on. I tested his computer with my monitor to make sure his monitor wasn't broken. Same, nothing. No error messages either. I put in a PCI video card just to make sure his onboard video wasn't broken for some reason. Again, nothing. It's as if either his hard drive is completely toast, or his motherboard is toast. Or else the power supply was dead. Inside his computer it was pretty clean looking. Anyway, I'm not trying to fix his computer, but salvage if I can, 14 years worth of his files. My computer is Windows ME, in that case how would I go about reading his NT drive and getting files copied over to my FAT32 drive? Is there a software for reading that type of file system? I had an old 40 gig FAT32 drive burried in my closet. I was able to install it as my second hard disk (D: drive) today. Now I have two hard drives working. I made sure to put the jumpers on the slave position and hook up the "slave" IDE cable to the new drive. Now that I've sucessfully done that, and have two working disk drives in my computer, my next step is, I'm hoping, to swap out the 2nd hard drive and place my friend's XP drive in there and recover his files. I just don't know if I should do that right now... rush in there and do it... or first come on here and get an opinion, because I may require some special program to read his NT files system. Would this work? http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/DiskInternals-NTFS-Reader.shtml Any suggestions?

Added. Thanks everyone :-)

Snap - I got the power Hannah Georgas - Robotic

Michael Jackson - Tabloid Junkie Michael Jackson - This Time Around

The Four Tops - Ask the Lonely Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - You've Really Got A Hold on Me

Metric - The Void

Sponge - Fields Real Life - Send Me an Angel

The Church - Destination Erasure - A Little Respect

Hannah Georgas - Enemies (live)

VNV Nation - Weltfunk

Roy Orbison - It's Over http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaTNGDiYx6U Neil Young - Light a Candle

Your welcome Larry! my favorite song of theirs is "id***," a self titled song. It's a 8 minute long opus, not on Youtube though. I like their humor.

Johnny Cash - Highway Patrolman

Slick Id*** - Merci Beaucoup

totally agree with you there Jaclaz :-) It's a headache.

Well, I have the ape Filter, but haven't gotten around to testing it yet... I'll get back to you on that. But originally, I did mean both .Flac and .ape files wouldn't burn. See the title of this topic :-) All of this DirectShow stuff is needlessly complicated. I emailed the author of Tiny Player, and he was kind enough to point me to the correct filter for Win9x support. Just browsing the xiph.org website, I had no idea what I was supposed to download... it's all a bunch of unexplained gibberish over there.

*Problem Solved* All I needed was this: http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/oggdsf/oggcodecs_0.73.1936.exe It's the "DirectShow Filter" for Ogg and Flac. Now, my Windows Media Player 9 can support both formats, It's pretty cool actually :-) Once that DirectShow Filter was installed, ImgBurn now recognizes and decodes Flac files without any problem. I'm listening to a burned CD as I type this. Yeah, no kidding. You'd think they could have at least explained this for Win9x users! Or at the very most, provided a link to the single file needed to fix it. Sheesh.