in need of help please

[timmybear]

i have got an old comp that im wanting to retrieve info from and i am having trouble doin so. it has windows xp and i cant get it to log on. it turns on and saying its logging on but never get to the home page. is there a way to retrieve the hard drive info or way to get it to turn on without erasing the hard drive? im desperate for help please. thank you for your time. if more info is needed pls email or pm me please

[Wrekx]

Will it load to safe mode?

[Old Rich]

and welcome to the Forum

You can take the drive out and temporarily attach it to a working pc to salvage the data.

Hard Drive Recovery Tutorial - How To Slave A Hard Drive

You may have to take ownership of the files first: How to take ownership of a file or a folder in Windows XP

. . or, You can use an adaptor like this: or an external enclosure like this.

or, you could use Ubuntu - this would eliminate the need to physically remove the Hard Drive.

You can get it from here: Download | Ubuntu

Step #2 on that page shows you how to create the USB/CD.

Once you boot into Ubuntu, (choose the option where it runs off the USB/CD) you can use it to copy your files from the Windows Partition to an external hard drive (Note: Do not copy anything to the Ubuntu Filesystem as it will not be saved on shut-down)

[timmybear]

No it wont load in safe mode....keeps saying its signing on but ut doesn't.

[timmybear]

@old rich....those ideas seem good but how would I go about pulling the memory if it wont boot up all the way?

[Old Rich]

Read the links . . pull the drive out or use Ubuntu

[spunk.funk]

AS Rich said, you can use an Ubuntu Live CD and save the files to a USB Flash Drive or you can pull the HDD out of the computer and attach it to a USB Adapter and attach that to a working computer.