[dmgetter]

Help! My Gateway Windows XP desktop computer shut down because the electricity went off. When I tried turning it back on a day later, it came up to the screen telling me my computer unexpectedly shut down, giving me options to restart including Normal, Last Restore Point, and then 3 Safe Modes, one just Safe Mode, one Safe with Networking and one Safe with something else (can't remember). Well, none of these options worked. I tried each option and all would try to boot, but just start over.

So, I then MISTAKENLY used the F11 "Recovery" option (which I have since learned was a no-no) which started a process I thought would just "recover" my computer. It went through some things that I didn't follow along very well with, but I didn't have to click on anything until it now says
"System Restore - Format and Recover
All files, including data files, on the user partition will be lost and the original factory-shipped files will be recovered to the user partition.
Do you want to continue?"
And the only option to click is "OK".

I have since learned that if I would have booted with my Gateway system disk, I may have had the option to click on "backup files".

My question now is, can I get out of this? If so, how? (I actually already tried just shutting down my computer, booting with system disk, hitting "R", but it brought me back to this same screen) I REALLY want to backup my data. I don't care if I have to reinstall everything, but I just want my files!

[Elvandil]

Are you sure that the machine booted from the system disk? Check BIOS setup and see if the CD-ROM is first in the boot order. It could be that you got to the same place because you still booted to the hard drive.

[Noyb]

If that doesn't work ..
I'd mount the HDD in another computer .. or an external HDD ..
And read/extract all my Personal Data from it.

[dmgetter]

I checked and it did boot from the cd.

It seems that since I got to this "delete all files" point in the recovery, that it goes directly to that point the next time it opens the "Gateway System Recovery", whether it was through "F11" or the boot disk

[dmgetter]

I've never mounted a hard drive to another computer, and don't have an external one, how would I do this? I do have a laptop.

[Noyb]

You should be able to use a USB adapter like this one ...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812156102

Then you can read the HDD contents into any good computer ...
as long as the HDD is still functional .. (doesn't need to be bootable) ...
and the Data hasn't been overwritten