Are you able to boot up in safe mode

 

Try booting up with a knoppix live cd. You can usually use that to navigate around the HD. You will need another external HD or another burner (either internal or external) for that to work. The knoppix cd/dvd takes up one of the drives. Easiest way would be to copy them to an external drive via copy/paste in the knoppix setup. It should automatically recognize any external drives connected to the system.

 

I tried and as you hold your breath it falls back to the Blue screen. I am going right now to hook it up to my other screen. I will boot it up and see what I get then list as much info for you as possible.

Hey. Thanks for the reply.

 

if you have an external enclosure for the drive you can pull it from the computer and put it in that enclosure. After that you can plug that into any working computer and burn it from the enclosure. For the 20 bucks it would be for the enclosure it sure as heck beats lost pictures. I had to do that with one of my laptop HDs a few years back.

No problem... I'm just wasting time on here until someone more knowledgeable can find time to help me with my broken computer

 

I can pull the HD and put it in my working computer. What is knoppfix (sp)? How would i get that?

 

Running XP HE SP1

Here is the message that is up:

Stop: coooo218 {Registry File failure} The registry can not load the hive (file):\systemroot\system32\config\SECURITY or it's log or alternate.
It's corrupt, absent or not writable.

Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact you administrator for further assistance.

 

go to google or and p2p/torrent search site and search knoppix. There are both cd and dvd versions of it. The dvd version is much more involved. For this problem i'd go with the cd version. Basically it is a very small version of linux that is designed to run straight from the cd instead of the hard drive. It runs a bit slow, but certainly will work for what you need. If you coudl pull the drive and run it in a working computer you should be able to access those files and burn them.

 

Well, if you can't get into safe mode, then you should reinstall Windows XP. Do you have the Windows XP install CD?

Keep in mind, moving the hard drive from one computer to another "will" enable you to retrieve those pictures, but if you really want to impress mommy-in-law then you should attempt to fix the whole thing.

 

Tosh is right... eventually you want it to be working again. A clean install of XP will do that. But DO NOT do that until you have retrieved the pictures from the disk and stored them on another dvd/cd/hard drive. The new XP install will erase everything on the hard drive.

 

Well, it doesn't have to be a "clean install", he could just reinstall the windows xp, "depending" on what type of Windows XP CD he has.

 

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install.

 

I tried the repair install and crossed my fingers while it rebooted. It went straight back to the Blue screen.

I will copy as much as I can while I have it connected and attempt to re-install XP completely.

Thanks to everyone for all the advice.
Peace,
Ian

 

Run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic tools.

 

How would I do that? Should I plug the drive back into my working system and try to download the tools? It is a Western Digital. I may have the driver CD from another WD I bought a while back.

I will work on all this later today and try some of these suggestions.

Thanks again,
Ian

 

You can run WD's tools in Windows or DOS (from a floppy/CD).
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp