Well, my mate gave me her laptop to fix, but as things go with laptops - i cant just rip out her drive and plug it into my PC to transfer the files across and then format and reinstall on the drive. The problem seems to be that the computer will not boot past the XP loading screen despite what you boot setting you choose (safe mode etc). Windows XP boot disks do bugger all (won't even allow access to the c:), and the recovery console simply is more troubles than solutions for me. So I was considering reinstalling a new version of Xp over a previous version. Would the files on the hard drive still be there for access. Is it possible to delete or rename the "c:\WINDOWS\" directory to bypass any issues with booting the wrong version of windows? Any help would be great guys, thx

if you have a physycal defect on the disk then a re install won't do diddly. Run a scandisk on the drive first to make sure you have no defective sectors. If scandisk finds a defect it will mark that sector so that nothing gets written on it

You mentioned the Recovery Console; are you able to boot to the RC and did you try the chkdsk /r switch? This will recover bad sectors and recover readable information. Be patient, the /r switch will take some time to run. L L

Unfortunately, CHKDSK didn't work (ie: it fixed one or two errors), but it still loads weird and freezes on the windows XP loading screen in 256 colours :S Any suggestions on how to access the files? can i rename the windows directory, install a new version and then specify in the recovery program to load the proper version?