Saving files or folders when Vista won't boot . . . .

[sam13484]

I'm working on an HP notebook, which normally runs Vista. It won't boot into the OS, and I've tried everyway I can think of to do a recovery, short of reinstalling Vista. Does anyone know a way to at least copy the user folder to a disk, when Vista is dead in the water? Any utility that will run off a boot CD? The notebook will let me put it back the way it was when first purchased, but I would really like to get the documents and photos off the drive before I do that. Thanks!

I tried a couple of products from Paragon, but they only let me move files around the hard drive, not copy them to a CD. I also tried Paragon Partition Manager (boot CD) to see if I could create a new partition, move the files there, and then reformat c drive, but the create option appears greyed out.

Anyone have a suggestion about this?

Edited May 19, 2008 by sam13484

[joe43wv]

Do you have any way of hooking the laptop drive to another PC and pulling the info? I've purchased a SATA/IDE to USB adapter and it'll read laptop drives as well. Their fairly cheap and well worth the money.

[sam13484]

Your suggestion will be my last resort. I'm still kind of hoping that a software solution can be had. I'll continue to work at it for another day, and then it's off to the computer store to pick up some hardware.

[fizban2]

Your suggestion will be my last resort. I'm still kind of hoping that a software solution can be had. I'll continue to work at it for another day, and then it's off to the computer store to pick up some hardware.

if you have access to a WinPE or Bart PE disk you could try booting into either of those environments and copying the files you need across to another HD or networked computer