After 3 years if faithful service, my Laptop seems to have died. Never, I repeat never, let someone else use your laptop for a class presentation. Damn kids loaded up some photoviewer stuff and the PC just froze out. After several minutes you can get it to the splash screen but it usually freezes. Now most of the time the screen will not come on. An attempt at a windows repair resulted in a BSOD..so I am thinking it is shot. Never had the slightest hiccup until today!! BUT, it has a load of exam/school important stuff which I was just about to backup this week. Is there any software that would copy the contents of the HD to an external USB HD without needin to boot windows? I realise I could get an adaptor to put the laptop HD into a normal PC as a second IDE device and try that way but I would have to wait until next week for that and I really need those files. So, any ideas?

"I realise I could get an adaptor" Ideally, yes Short of that, I would recommend Bart's PE which is basically a Windows 'Live' CD I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

Splinters: Some other "live CDs" that would probably work that I like are the "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows" (see http://www.ubcd4win.com/) and Knoppix (a Linux distribution that can read various Windows filesystems.) Based on what you have told us so far, I really do not believe that there is anything "physically" wrong with your laptop. After you have retrieved all of your data, I suggest you repartition (remove all partitions and then recreate them) and then do a complete clean (new) install of Windows either from restore CDs or from an install CD. I truly believe you have some sort of file or filesystem corruption that "Windows Repair" could not fix. I have tried to use "Windows Repair" on different systems about six times and two or three of those times it did not work, but a clean, new install did.

Cheers guys, just picked up a USB to IDE adaptor and I am copying the files now. Once that is done, I can attempt a reformat. At least I am salvaging the data...I hope. As for booting from CD, tried that last night but the Pc froze again, so I do suspect some hardware has gone a bit weird.

What do you mean? How were you able to boot and perform the file salvage operation? If you can't boot from a CD at all, then sure, it can't be a Windows issue. You might consider testing the RAM with something like memtest I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.

I have the HD connected to another PC via the USB to IDE adaptor-like an external HD. Files copied over just fine. I agree that this must be hardware and I am inclined to think it is power or screen related.

Ah, I see - ok then "power or screen related" I'm not sure that those are likely guesses (or what "screen related" means, for that matter) It'd be worthwhile testing (or reseating) the RAM anyways - if that is problematic, nothing will work. If you cannot boot from any sort of CD or diskette, then you're not going to make much progress either I'm not one of those who think Bill Gates is the devil. I simply suspect that if Microsoft ever met up with the devil, it wouldn't need an interpreter.