My primary hard drive for my laptop crashed. Initially the computer froze. I was able to start the computer in safe mode twice, but now I cannot start up the computer at all. It will run the Window's XP screen and then tries to get me restart in safe mode or last know good configuration. But when either was is attempted the computer will not boot up. Now when I run the hard drive as a slave on another computer, I cannot access hard drive . When it is run as a slave, the master computer recognizes that new hardware as been installed, but I cannot access the hard drive. Any suggestions on what to do?

Since you can't access the drive even on a desktop machine, you're pretty much finished. Data can be accessed sometimes, but it's very expensive to have done. I hope you had backups of your data you needed.

When you say you can't access the drive even as a slave in another computer what exactly do you mean? Does the drive show up in Device Manager? If so, you need to take ownership of the files/folders. Look at the link below to learn how. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421 Once you do that put the drive back into the laptop and boot to the CD and perform a Repair install. Look at the link below. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341

The hard drive does show up in the device manager, but the hard disk keeps spinning and then it says drive is unaccessable.

If you can't access the drive at all then the info on the drive is already lost. Why not try to boot from XP CD and reinstall Windows. If you can't even do that then the drive probably is a total loss.

If I reinstall Windows will I lose all the data. I don't have all the data on the drive backed up.

Device Manager and Disk Management are not the same thing. What about disk management? Just because Windows can't access the files doesn't mean they can't be recovered. If you take the advise in #4 you most likely WILL lose them. If the drive is spinning then there is hope.