Erased system

[Dave]

My Sony RX650 running XP has been down for a month. Boots
up to Windows Welcome screen, then quits. Norton doesn't
help. Have Restoration CDs, but that would dump the hard
drive, and I want to save Desktop files and folders.
Has anyone ever done this?
I've thought of installing another hard drive and making
it the master, then using it to access the old, crippled
drive. Would this work?
Sure appreciate any help.

 

[Det.John.Kimble]

Do you have an XP install CD? Should have gotten one with the system. Try
doing an XP Repair. Had a similar situation with a Dell laptop and was able
to do an XP repair.

Might want to start here. Lots of other good stuff on XP Repair on the web.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315341&Product=winxp

 

[D.Currie]

My Sony RX650 running XP has been down for a month. Boots
up to Windows Welcome screen, then quits. Norton doesn't
help. Have Restoration CDs, but that would dump the hard
drive, and I want to save Desktop files and folders.
Has anyone ever done this?
I've thought of installing another hard drive and making
it the master, then using it to access the old, crippled
drive. Would this work?
Sure appreciate any help.

You'd probably be better off taking the drive out of the dead computer and
putting it into a live one to copy the files. If you put a new hard drive
into the nonworking system, you're going to have to go through the bother of
setting it all up. Which is fine if you're going to keep it as your boot
drive, but extra work if it's going to be removed later.