Hi everyone, I have a family member who can’t boot into windows anymore, and they have very important data that needs to be recovered. I have had something like this happen before to my computer it wouldn’t boot into windows, im not sure if it’s the same problem I haven’t looked at it yet. Well anyway all I did was put an old hdd in it as the master and the one that wouldn’t boot I set as the slave, and basically I just pulled the data off it by using the old hdd. That’s what I suggested that we do with theirs, but I have been thinking about trying to use a gpart boot cd, and if I am not mistaken xp makes unpartionted space of about 8 mb, so I was wondering if I could just make that a secondary partion, shrink the current partion like 2 gigs and then put that on the 8 mb one then put a fresh copy of xp on the newly created partion. Then all I should be able to do is go into my computer see the old partion and move the data off into the new one, or should I just stick to putting an old hard drive in it then moving the data? Could something go wrong with gpart and make me lose everything? Thanks for any help, I need to go over to try something asap.

Your first choice is the safest. Copying the data to another drive is the best choice. Save the data before trying to recover the hard drive. The 8mb space is only on some hard drives and is used by some manufacturer's recovery disks. Re-partitioning when there is an error could lead to losing all of the data.

i would go for your safe tried and tested method. But there is another way,in my experience. What you do is boot from windows xp cd, proceed as if you are doing a new installation, at some point AFTER the licence agreement it says it has found that xp already exists on the hard disc and says do you want to repair it. say Yes. This might repair it, but it might also just have the same previous problem after the repair installation completes. If the same problem is there you then proceed to the same place where it says do you want to try repair, and say you want to do a new installation, but after that when it asks if you want to reformat the disc, you do NOT reformat, you leave the file structure as existing. This then reinstals xp but leaves all your data in place. Because XP thinks you are now a different user it does not show you the things personal to to you like emails etc but all the stuff can be found on the hard disc using the Search part of windows explorer as long as in the Advanced search options you tell it to search hidden files/folders also. To be on the safe side it's probably best to recover the data by your tried and tested method for safety, but then you can try doing what i suggested also.

I have had similar problems in the past and what I always do to recover data is to boot the PC using a Linux Live CD (I use Ubuntu LiveCD but you can use any available such as Knoppix or PCLinuxOS). This gives you access to all your hard drive partitions without installing anything on the Hard drive. From there just back up your data to a different partition or better still to a removal media such as USB drive. When finished just remove the LiveCD and reboot and your PC setting should not be affected. You can then either do Repair reinstall or a fresh reinstall as mentioned by Cliffpage knowing your data is safely backed up.

The Live CD method is one I use a lot now, clean quick and you have complete control of all the data on the drive and if you do have an external drive no need to open the case... Keep the old stuff running

I concur with the two above responses. Knoppix is what I have. Knoppix Linux is freeware and can be downloaded, but be aware the DL is huge. No problem is you have a broadband connection. If not, Google for a site that will sell you a CD with Knoppix already configured on it for a nominal fee. Knoppix runs from the CD but does require some things in be written to your system. The above notation about opening the case may or may not apply. If your BIOS allows booting to a USB device and the only CD drive you have is USB you shouldn't need to open the case. If you have an internal CD drive simply set the BIOS to boot to that device first.

This is what cliffpage is talking about: how to do an XP Repair Setup, step by step: http://www.windowsreinstall.com/win... An XP Repair Setup will not harm your existing Windows installation, but it can only fix things Windows detects as wrong, and/or replace corrupted or missing Windows files that are on your original XP CD. If your Windows CD did not have SP1 or SP2 included, and you updated to SP1 or SP2, you will probably also have to install that again to get SP1 or SP2 working properly again. The 8mb unpartitioned space is deliberately made that way by XP on any hard drive if the entire drive has been partitioned by XP. It is supposed to be there. Same applies to Win 2000. If you try to delete and re-make the last (or only) partition in XP (or 2000) so that the 8mb unallocated space is used, XP won't let you.