Over the course of the last year, since I dropped 98 for XP, I've got a ton of crap from my computer. I was getting corrupted registry errors in a regular basis, like every 1-2 months, which would lead me to reformat often. Other errors were DLL corruptions and the like. After I dropped XP Home for XP Pro, the system ran OK for the next 3 months until now.
One day I got again a corrupted registry preventing me to start Windows. I fixed it according to the guidelines in MS.com, then one week later an important DLL failed at life. I reinstalled the DLL, and that started a chain reaction revealing more corrupted DLLs and finally killing the OS with a boot BSOD. I reformatted. Everything was going fine until I got BSOD'D during the OS installation. I reformatted again. Now it was working but some programs like Acrobat 7 Pro didn't even install correctly. I couldn't even uninstall it, so I killed it manually. Yesterday I got a sudden BSOD, then some driver errors, then a corrupted registry boot failure.
I tried to do a repair install, and when the system restarted the BIOS alerted me of inminent damage to the hard drive. So that was the REAL problem all the time.
How do I recover my data before the disk gets trashed? There's no OS, and the XP CD recovery console doesn't let me access any folder except for c:\windows... I've considered trying a Linux live CD, but last time I tried using one of these the computer didn't do anything. I have no access to another computer (to use a slave connection with the bad drive)
The disk has 2 partitions, the dead C: (NTFS) and the OS-less D: (FAT32) which has YEARS of work.
One day I got again a corrupted registry preventing me to start Windows. I fixed it according to the guidelines in MS.com, then one week later an important DLL failed at life. I reinstalled the DLL, and that started a chain reaction revealing more corrupted DLLs and finally killing the OS with a boot BSOD. I reformatted. Everything was going fine until I got BSOD'D during the OS installation. I reformatted again. Now it was working but some programs like Acrobat 7 Pro didn't even install correctly. I couldn't even uninstall it, so I killed it manually. Yesterday I got a sudden BSOD, then some driver errors, then a corrupted registry boot failure.
I tried to do a repair install, and when the system restarted the BIOS alerted me of inminent damage to the hard drive. So that was the REAL problem all the time.
How do I recover my data before the disk gets trashed? There's no OS, and the XP CD recovery console doesn't let me access any folder except for c:\windows... I've considered trying a Linux live CD, but last time I tried using one of these the computer didn't do anything. I have no access to another computer (to use a slave connection with the bad drive)
The disk has 2 partitions, the dead C: (NTFS) and the OS-less D: (FAT32) which has YEARS of work.