Originally posted by: flutterby
... I have another computer in the house that if i{"I"} could hook my hard drive up to it and get the info off then that would be ideal.
When XP was new, I gave it a whirl and hated it, so it's back on the shelf in case I ever change my mind. But there are some extra steps to follow with XP and second hard drives that aren't required by any of the Win9x's. Chances are pretty good that there's not yet been a loss to the entire contents of your drive, whatever has happened to the operating system's files.
I would suggest that you verify with an "OS Software Oriented" web site what you should do. AnandTech is very much a Gearhead place, with much less emphasis on the intricacies of getting and keeping an OS nicely tuned up. The Annoyances.Org web site has plenty of reference files about problems with WinXP, and a good message forum also (the latter of which is covered up to the brim with tons of newbies who won't read the various FAQ files, and all of whom seem to have to keep on asking the same half dozen questions over and over instead of just looking around a little on the site).
Always disconnect the power cable in the machine from the outlet, and touch the side of the power supply to bleed off any static in your body before handling any electronic parts inside of the machine. Locate the hard drive you now have by following the ribbon cables from the mother board to the storage devices. Both the Hard Drive and any Optical drive will be connected with at least 40 wire cables. Floppy drives are on 34 wire ribbons, slightly narrower. Recently made computers and Hard Drives use 80-wire cables, and the fine wire size is readily seen to be different from what is used for either 34 or 40 wire cables.
Each hard drive has a set of "jumpers" near the ATA connector on the back. Currently produced Hdd's have a picture on the label showing the three main setups for the jumper connector itself. That item is used to close a particular pair of contacts depending on how the system will use the drive. You won't be able to examine that label while the present drive is hard-mounted in its drive bay. But both computers should have come with manuals that should include pictures of the jumpers also.
If you lost your manuals, you will have to dismount both drives to view their labels. Most commonly, each drive was shipped from the factory with the "Cable Select" pins closed by a jumper. Unless you are already experienced with using and tinkering with computer drives, those (Cable Select, or "CS") settings aren't useful to you.
You need to set the existing drive in the still-working computer to be the "Master" drive. Use a tweezer or a forceps to remove the jumper and move it according to the picture on the drive label for MASTER. then on the drive from the PC with problems, move the jumper to "Slave". I am looking at a new 60 GB Maxtor Hdd as I write this, and the Slave connection is NO CONNECTION AT ALL. For it to be a Slave, I will move the jumper onto a nearby "single pin" position, so it's conveniently available for any future change in drive status.
Then you need to attach the drive to the ribbon cable in the working PC. There should be a second ATA connector on the cable now connected to the Master Drive in that system. Look for a spare modular plug to provide power to the second drive. If there is none available, go to a computer store and buy a "Y" connector that splits an existing plug into two, so you can finish the connections. It isn't necessary to remount the existing drive immediately or to find a place in which to mount the second one, if you don't plan on the second drive being a permanent part.
Just leave the PC opened up, lying on its side, and position the drives on the chassis frame where they won't fall off while you perform the file transfer operations. Reconnect the power cord to the outlet and power the system on.
Then, depending on the BIOS in your computer, you may need to have the Setup run a procedure to add the new drive. The two most common ways to enter Setup are via either the Delete Key or the F2 Function Key, pressed after the POST is complete, and before Windows tries to start. If you never see an on-screen prompt naming which key to press to enter setup, you'll need to tell us the exact computer model involved and we'll tell you the right key.
If it is the Delete key, but you are too slow pressing it, you should reboot and just start repeatedly pressing that key during the POST, and you'll have a better chance of getting in. Find the page devoted to basic CMOS data, and there should be an indication whether Setup has already checked the added drive and been able to query its onboard Plug & Play circuit to set the drive up. When the drive is actually damaged, the setup will be unable to do anything with it. If there is no reference at all to a second drive there, look for a page in setup that will run an "Auto-Detect" function.
Assuming this much has been working well so far, I must make an assumption that the WinXP procedure is not greatly different from W2K, which is an OS that I do use fairly regularly. Before the OS will start to use the new drive, it must be told to do so. The Drive Manager is part of the Computer Management function; and that is one of the "Administrative Tools". Under "Storage" is the part for Disk Management, and once you're inside that part, the option to Rescan should come up in the menu at the top, if it hasn't done this automatically as soon as the Drive Manager opened.
Your broken PC's drive should be ID'd as a "Foreign" drive, if its data is basically all intact. Bring up a context menu (Right Click on the Foreign Drive) and use the "Import" function, and the drive should become accessible.
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