msbock said:
I thought we were talking about windows and computers, but hey if you need a
doctor, go for it !!!. Its a free cyber world & I can see you need help. . As
far as a lawyer you probably should ask for one of them too. Idiot
Accurate diagnosis, maybe you should be a doctor
Anyway, Mick is right. We had this with an XP machine at work that also
by chance happens to run our payroll. The Pros could not fix it so they
bought a new machine. I did manage to fix it but only by installing a
new drive and and a retail copy of XP (The OEM CD was of course
missing). However the drive is also working fine so something must have
damaged the original install. IOW there seems to have been nothing wrong
with the machine or the drive, at first we suspected hardware, obviously
it wasn't.
I don't know what else to tell you except to expect the worst and hope
for the best, we did get a BSOD but it went by too fast to really see
much. If you can reinstall XP on another drive and then put this one
back as "Slave" or whatever you probably can get your data back.
Also, clean out the heatsinks / fans etc but if you use compressed air
do not let the fans spin, they will be damaged and may damage other
components electronically.
Personally I think an auto update may have clashed with something in our
case, the machine has a UPS so power outage not likely the cause.
It goes without saying that everybody here "Used" to have XP and many
still do, so disregard the initial rude reply.
If you get absolutely stuck for something to read the drive with you can
use a Linux Live CD (Doesn't install anything or damage what is there)
so you could transfer data to another networked machine if you have one.
I have used Ubuntu for this a few times.
