April Win10 update BSOD'd my wife's desktop--how do I pull data off an OS HDD?

[Raswan]

Long story short: She turned on the desktop after a few weeks of idle, began the normal update process, and something got corrupted. Can get into windows, but it's just a black desktop with that error message that says "Can't retrieve your desktop", and no ability to click on anything, even the windows icon.

None of the restore/reset options work, including the command-line repair options (both with and without a bootable USB of Win10 plugged in).

So, I'm just going to reformat and reinstall windows, but there's some data on there she'd rather not lose. I pulled the drive (it's a western digital blue SATA), plugged it into my desktop, but upon restart it seems like her OS drive superseded my OS drive, and all I get is that same damn blue screen asking me to choose a keyboard language.

Thus my question: how do I pull the data off of it, given that it's an OS drive?

Thanks everyone. This is driving me up a wall.

 

[Raswan]

Alright, overrode the boot order in BIOS and into the drive. I had been trying to exclude the drive from the boot order, but Windows kept finding it and placing it first on the list. Kudos to ASUS bios for the easy option of overriding.

The saga continues...

 

[Raswan]

Just had a thought--apparently I never saved her registry key for this desktop, which yes, poses a problem down the road here. Any way I can pull it from this drive while it's plugged into my desktop?

 

[Raswan]

Bam. Got it. After 6 different programs, Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder did the trick.

What a rollercoaster ride of emotions...

 

[UsandThem]

Bam. Got it. After 6 different programs, Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder did the trick.

What a rollercoaster ride of emotions...

Glad you figured it out.

For the love of all that is holy, make sure she is backing up data she doesn't want to lose, as the next time it could be a dead drive.