Hi again
If the hard drive is still detected by the PC's Bios (you could enter Bios Setup & have a look), then you might be able to access and save some of the data -- depending on how severely the drive is damaged. If the PC is in good enough condition to boot to a command prompt from a bootable floppy diskette or a bootable CD (a bootable diskette usually will yield an A:> prompt, a bootable Windows9x/Me CD "with cd-rom support" usually will yield a command prompt also) - switch to the drive letter of the hard drive (probably C) by typing
C: at the command prompt (the command prompt should then switch in appearance to
C:>). If you receive an error trying to switch, you might not be able to get to the data. If you successfully see the C:> prompt, then try the
directory command to see if you can see files and folders on the drive -- from the C:> prompt, type
dir.
If you can see files and folders, you may be able to save the data to a CD-R, a USB key, or to another hard drive.
If you have a Windows XP PC and a Windows XP CD available, you can make an "Ultimate Boot CD for Windows": and start your failed-hard-drive-PC with it --- the UBCD4Win has CD writing tools included, and you could burn your data onto CDs. ---
http://www.ubcd4win.com --- even if the hard drive's partitions are damaged, the UBCD4Win also has File Recovery tools that can attempt to retrieve the data.
Or -- you can slave the failing drive to another computer by placing it in a USB hard drive enclosure, or by setting the proper jumpers & attaching it to the proper hard drive cable.
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To check if the other parts in your older computer are still good or not (which can help you decide whether you want to bother saving it), you can run some basic diagnostics:
Check Your Hardware:
Use a bootable CD with diagnostics (either the UBCD4Win or the Linux-based UBCD ---
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com ---) to check the cpu, memory, optical drives, etc. [if your hard drive hadn't already proven to have failed, you could test that too].
Check in the system's Bios that the settings are OK. --- Once in your system's Bios Setup, pay particular attention to the system time & date: if it has reverted backwards several years, it's time to replace the CMOS battery. The battery is often a 3v coin-type battery, such as the popular CR-2032 (about $1.50 USD). ---
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph04375&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=&product=94878
Best of luck
. . . Gary
