FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Ways to get data off laptop hard drive when laptop won't boot?

Mar 30, 2005 | 8:51 am

#5

pdhenry

Join Date: Apr 2002

Location: Pennsylvania

Programs: HHonors Silver

Posts: 4,029

Quote:

Originally Posted by MagMile

Thanks all. I tried booting off the recovery CDs but they didn't appear to offer any option other than reinstalling the operating system, which I believe you should be able to do without erasing all data, but the warning on the program claimed it would result in loss of all data.

A recovery CD isn't the same as a regular Windows XP CD. My wife has an HP laptop and her recovery CDs are the same way - the only option it gives is to reformat the HD and install a clean copy of Windows and the HP-included apps. When we had similar problems I ended up connecting the CD to my desktop to recover the data, which required me to find some hardware and software (the desktop was running Win98 on a FAT32 disk at the time) to connect the two.

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