Good afternoon...
I'm reaching out to the computer savvy community to assist with a problem I have with an ACER desktop computer. When turning on the PC, it does not boot completely. The fan runs but the monitor remains black and the lights on the PC do not come on.

I have since purchased another computer. However, the problem is this. I have thousands of photos on the old computer that I hope I can retrieve... somehow.

Any suggestions? I've read tons of blogs online, some mention removing the hard drive from the old and putting it into another computer to retrieve the data, but I have no idea how to do this and quite frankly, I'm leary to attempt.

I apprecate any suggestions or advice you may be able to provide.

Thank you.
Fab

Since you are a greenhorn I would suggest that you pay to have the pictures downloaded onto CD's.

When my old PC died I did exactly what you said you had read to do... I pulled out the old hard drive, opened up the new PC (just a few screws) and inside the new machine was a hookup labeled "slave"... connected the old HD and there was nothing to it... clicked on "my computer" to find the slave drive (this was after starting up the machine, as the work was done with it off) and found many of my old pics.

I did lose some in the process. Perhaps a pro could have retrieved more. But the general hookup of an old drive into a new computer as a slave was really quite easy.

I'm not a pro at computers, so I defer to those who are.

Hi, I have a suggest, If your are using WinXP then you can do parallel installation,By doing this you will not loos any data OR you can try start up repair,Also you have not mentioned when was the last time it worked fine,Was there any H/W or Software changes made after which this issue started

If you are using Windows XP.. For parallel installation here is the steps
Windows XP Home Parallel install (http://www.windowsreinstall.com/winxphome/sp2sp3installxpcdparallell/indexfullpage.htm)