Presario 700 won't boot

Hello... Trying to rescue my bosse's laptop - he has NO cd's or other support disks, as he just moved here (ATL area) from New York. His display just cleared and it froze up. Now it only starts booting, even in safe mode, and locks up with the progress bar about 20% across.

Suspect drive failure, and he will buy a new one if necessary.

System:
Presario 700.
Windows XP (no disks and I use Win 98SE and Win2KPro here at home)
20GB drive

Reseated the memory expansion, but have not opened it yet. I want to see if any data can be recovered. I have a USB drive for recovery and network, but have to be able to see the drive first. Booted with Win98 floppy but cannot see the drive. FDISK reports it as Active, NTFS.

How can I boot something to be able to recover data? He is fine if it is wiped-out and reloaded, as long as it can be used. But I want to try to recover what I can first.

Any suggestions?
THANKS!

 

Try booting with a WinXP boot disk. If the Drive was NTFS a plain ole WIN98 System is not going to work with it.

If you don't have one go to Bootdisk.com and download one.

 

Winbob,
Thanks. That is a great site! I'm going to give the xpquick a try to see if |I can read the data, then see if he needs a new drive or only an install.

Will update you.mrbill57