Flash Blue Screen

[estame6]

ASUS/GE 1.8M 524M 40Ghd XP Pro SP2

Worked perectly for two years. Basic eMail, Family Pictures, Tunes etc.

Switching on goes through the bios set up and now tells me its been switched

off incorreclty and asks me to either start windows normally, safe mode, last

known etc.

Selecting start normally, I see the windows logo start up screen for few

seconds then a blue screen flashes and goes back to begining switch on

screen.

Selecting Safe Mode, screen show many loaded files, pauses then straight

back to the re-boot screen.

I have selected all the options with basically same results.

I followed a link explaining how to re-install xp from the repair option on the

installation disk but due to not being able to see the c: drive the repair option

wasn't available, just mentioned it was an unformatted partition and wanted to

format it and will loose all data.

Local computer repair outlet ran winteralls 2005. He booted up from cd and

tech said the c: drive it couldn't be mounted. He was real busy and was getting

nowhere so brought computer home.

I understand that I'm going to have to re-install a fresh copy of xp but would

like to try save some data and my address book etc.

My question: Is there a program that will allow me to access the hard drive in

dos mode (ntfs) and allow me to copy off some of these file?

Many thanks for reading this.

David...

[Ponch]

A BartPE CD would allow you to copy available files to an USB stick for instance but if as the tech said the drive is unmountable, there is little chance you can get anything. Still if you see the Windows logo, it must be accessible, or at least for a while. Either the drive becomes unusable because it heats after few seconds, either there is something really strange. Or the tech didn't really try.

[cluberti]

I'd second the BartPE option, as it's likely the drive is still fine and just Windows is corrupted. You wouldn't get the splash screen if Windows couldn't find the boot sector on the C: drive and load the kernel files or registry (hint hint), so the tech just didn't try.

[Idontwantspam]

Another vote for BartPE. In case you don't know what it is (I didn't used to, either, or maybe you already do):

BartPE is a lightened version of Windows that is bootable directly from a CD - it doesn't touch the hard drive, unless you want it to. It's useful for retrieving files from an un-bootable hard disk, since it doesn't boot off the hard disk, you can do whatever you need to it, like copy files to a USB drive or something like that. It can also fix the registry if necessary. You can find the creator at http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/. Download it and install it (to another computer of course). Then, create a PE disk. Boot the bad computer off the disk, and voila! You'll need Windows installation files, either from an install CD or an i386 folder on your computer. Installed files in C:/WINDOWS won't work. I'd use a server 2003 disk if you can, though XP works just fine, too. The OS being used for the disk doesn't have to be the same as the one on the offending computer. Also, before making your disk, you might want to replace the default wallpaper for the disk with the cooler one I made.

Welcome to MSFN, by the way.

Edited September 17, 2007 by Idontwantspam