Can't get my comp booted up???

[knorwj]

ok so I just moved from NY to virginia and my computer was in the car for about a week. It worked fine when packed. I went to set it up yesterday and it will turn on and begin to start up, when it gets to the screen where the windows emblem is there and the little blue bars are scrolling across it will reset itself after a minute or so. Sometimes it will tell me windows did not start properly etc and to try and start in safe mode.

I've tried safe mode, I've tried pulling the hard drive and re plugging everything in, I've tried booting from my windows disk. I checked all my wires.

I don't know if something got knocked loose in the trip or if maybe it got too hot in the car and messed something up?

I'm really screwed if I can't get my stuff off this thing. It has my entire digital portfolio on it from 3 years of computer art/graphic design. And don't say anything about backing up my files haha this thing was my back up, I was in the process of reformatting my main computer. So now I have one computer wiped clean waiting to have all my stuff from the busted one copied over haha. Terrible timing I guess.

Any help or suggestions would be great guys. I don't care if I have to get new parts or anything as long as I can still get my stuff off this thing.

Thanks
Will

[Oz]

What sort of hard drives does it have? I would take the hard disks out and get a PATA or SATA to USB converter (depending what sort of drives they are) and trying to image the data onto another computer or removable hard drive.

The one you formatted could be connected to this as well, use the free Get Data Back tool to recover information that has been erased recently.

As for your PC, check your memory, video card and hard drive connectors very carefully first. Make sure all cables are firmly in their sockets and all devices like RAM and cards are firmly seated in the motherboard, and they all have power.

Consult your motherboard handbook for more info.

[knorwj]

hey thanks for the help Oz.

Its a western digital caviar 60GB. I bought it about 3 years ago I think... My other comp that i formatted is an apple powerbook, and my external hd is still up where I used to live in storage.

I rechecked all my cards, ram, and wires. They all seem good. I couldn't even begin to guess where my book is for my motherboard, I built this comp about 5 years ago and its moved with me at least 6 times, I think the book was lost somewhere along the way.

I think i'm going to pick up a second hard drive regardless because the 60 was just not big enough anymore. When I do i'm going to install windows on it and make it my primary drive, if my comp boots up and runs with the new HD then do you think i'll be able to hook the old hard drive up and get my stuff off it then maybe wipe it clean and see if I can use it for extra storage. Think that might work?

[Oz]

I think that's a good idea, unplug the hard drive now and put it in an anti static bag, and store in a drawer. Get a new drive, setup Windows on it, get a PATA (if it's 3 years old, it's probably PATA) to USB connector from the computer shop and connect it all up to a USB port on your computer.

Use GetDataBack to image off the data.

Alternatively, I would first try getting a bootable CD recovery disk like Mini PE. I can help you get a copy of Mini PE if you PM me, or post here.

If you set your BIOS to boot from CDROM and put this in your drive, it will boot into a RAMDISK rescue Operating System, you can use any of the host of data recovery tools off there to try and get as much data as you can off the disk, and then use any of the supplied CD/DVD Burning tools to Backup the data from the hard drive.

Oz

[knorwj]

awesome sounds great. I'll let you know as soon as I pick up the drive and start working on it. Thanks again!

[Oz]

You don't need the spare drive to go down the Mini PE bootable CD data recovery path.....