Retrieving files from a laptop

[falcemob]

My daughtere's laptop has gone wrong, it won't boot to Windows, saying a file is missing or corrupt, we cant even boot in safe mode.
Is there any way of saving her important files (not backed up before anyone asks) to another computer, I.E. using the laptop HD as a slave, or is there any other way?

[mattley]

For not much money you can but a USB external drive caddy which you can put the drive in and hopefully read the disk of another machine.

[shocker-z]

Or if you have a desktop machine you could look at somthing like this

www.bay-wolf.com/hddadapter.htm

then stick it in a second hdd in your desktop machine

We use simular adapters at work and it's great. if you have a new laptop you may even have a SATA laptop HDD which means you would have to use the USB options if the desktop has no SATA connectors.

Maplins also sell these

Regards
Liam

[falcemob]

Ok, thanks for that, we have managed to boot up with Linux on a CD and we are copying files to a USB flash drive

[dttheliman]

Absolutely know whats wrong after a spate of the same with some laptops - the issue is caused by the laptop craching through the battery running out - i.e the user thinks the battery is invincible - the fixes are available on windows support - they are a bit of stuffing around but you can do it!! just search on the error message.

Cheers Tim

[Bodo]

falcemob said:

Ok, thanks for that, we have managed to boot up with Linux on a CD and we are copying files to a USB flash drive

Best way to go imho!

[falcemob]

dttheliman said:

Absolutely know whats wrong after a spate of the same with some laptops - the issue is caused by the laptop craching through the battery running out - i.e the user thinks the battery is invincible - the fixes are available on windows support - they are a bit of stuffing around but you can do it!! just search on the error message.

Cheers Tim

Which battery do you mean, the main battery or the small back up battery, if it has one?

[ThePassenger]

falcemob said:

dttheliman said:

Absolutely know whats wrong after a spate of the same with some laptops - the issue is caused by the laptop craching through the battery running out - i.e the user thinks the battery is invincible - the fixes are available on windows support - they are a bit of stuffing around but you can do it!! just search on the error message.

Cheers Tim

Which battery do you mean, the main battery or the small back up battery, if it has one?

I belive he's talking about the main battery pack. In some cases Windows might not be able to correctly read the charge level and thus won't standby / hibernate / flash up warnings when it falls below a certain level. Microsoft have put patches up for the Windows ACPI stuff, although they are via the proper website and not Windows Update. Having said that, usually, the power indicators on a laptop (i.e. the flashing warning lights) are BIOS controlled so they'll flash regardless of OS installed.

Of course, if the laptop was running on mains at the time, it's a moot point. Laptops don't need their battery when running from a power pack (seriously, rip the battery out, plug in the power pack and hit the power button... it'll turn on and work normally). If it was on mains when it fell over I'd run various diagnostics on the system (chkdsk, et al) either via a quickie repair install or the recovery console before putting the laptop back in to service.

[dttheliman]

Hi - talking about the main battery - XP is stupid and sometimes does not recognise low battery / or kids ignore it - the resulting crash corrupts the reg - went through a spate of this untill I realised what was going on with the laptop - the fix is at windows tech support note number 307545

Tim