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Help! I'm having a serious Windows problem

D

Dari

Lifer
I have this old (circa 2002) XP computer from Compaq. It has now crashed and no matter what I do, it won't start up. The computer will give me options to boot up in safe mode but then it will just go back to that same option screen. Even when I put in a Windows XP cd, it won't recognize it. I've taken it to a friend who said that XP does not like Fat32 (the file system that the hard drive was originally formatted in). Anything I can do/try to just get the data off of it? I've tried putting the hard drive in an external enclosure but it doesn't show up in my other XP computer (via USB).
 
XP reads FAT just fine, I'd stop asking that friend for technical advice. =)

If the drive doesn't at least show up in Disk Management on another machine after putting it into an enclosure then you either put it in the enclosure wrong or the drive is dead.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
XP reads FAT just fine, I'd stop asking that friend for technical advice. =)

If the drive doesn't at least show up in Disk Management on another machine after putting it into an enclosure then you either put it in the enclosure wrong or the drive is dead.
Click to expand...

I figured as much about the friend's advice. As for the drive not showing up, I'm sorry I should've clarify my statement better. It does show up but there seems to be some type of error message associated with it.
 
OK. When I start up Partition Magic, this is what is says about the affected drive:

Disk 2 (38162MB 4865c 255h 63s) appears to have partitions created using a different drive geometry (240h 63s). This serious problem can lead to data loss. No partition manipulation should be made to this disk using this product or the operating system's products. You should back up the data on this disk, delete all partitions, create new partitions under the new drive geometry, and then restore using the backup.

EDIT: In my backup program, it says the drive is 100% full.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
Why are you using Partition Magic? Just use Disk Manager to assign it a drive letter.
Click to expand...

It already has a drive letter. I try to use Partition Magic to see hidden files. When I do a search from windows, it says that the parameters are incorrect.
 
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