My pc was on today and then I plugged in a USB drive in to load a document and as soon as I did that, it blue screened, the physical memory dump thing. SO then I restarted, and got this error non-system disk or disk error Replace and strike any key when ready I put the usb back and hit any key, nothing. I took it out, still nothing. I restarted with it both plugged in and not, and got nothing. Basically I want to know 2 things: -How can I fix this, if possible, without a reinstallation? -If I have to do a reinstallation of my OS, how can I save my files and programs from my hard drive first???? Thanks

Ok, it's not seeing the boot record. Watch the screen carefully between the time to turn on the switch and when you get the error. Does the BIOS see the hard drive at all? You should see something like: Primary Master WD BLAH XXX Primary Slave None Secondary Master CDROM SEcondary Slave NONE If it's not seeing the Primary Master at all, go into the BIOS and see what you can find. If it is seeing the HD then you can try using some type of boot floppy or CD. To tell you the truth I don't like any of the NTFS emergency boot disks. They don't compare to the older FAT disks. If all that fails try one of the boxes that you can put the HD in and plug it in to a USB port of another machine. You may be able to read the files and copy them. Actually, do that before you try a boot disk.