Hi there,

I have an XP system that is failing to boot and keeps restarting itself after the windows XP screen and the bar have appeared.

Ive now bought an external hard drive enclosure thinking this would enable me to view my files on the hard drive when I plug it into my vista system, however it just keeps asking me to 'format' the drive before I do anything else which would be detrimental!

Please can someone offer me some meaningful advice on how to retrieve my files off this hardrive, I have many photos and files I need on there!


Thanks in advance!

Since the new computer wants to format the drive, it sounds like the file system is damaged. This is generally pretty difficult to repair. My best recommendation is to try SpinRite (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) on it. You would return the drive to the old computer and boot into SpinRite (via floppy, CD, etc.)

This is not a cheap program, but if it doesn't work they will refund your money. Gibson Research Corp is a most reputable company.

Best of luck,
WallyH

As far as your system, I would suggest a repair installation to address the computer from restarting over and over.

Repair Installation
A Repair Install will replace the system files with the files on the XP CD used for the Repair Install. It will leave your applications and settings intact, but Windows updates will need to be reapplied.

This will (should) repair so that the computer will boot properly as it should
Perform a Repair Installation (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx)

As far as your ext drive, do the repair installation first without the ext drive attached and once system is back up, connect your ext drive and go to windows explorer and then right click on the new drive and choose format.
-Once formatted, you will be able to use this drive as a storage drive or whatever you like

As far as your ext drive, do the repair installation first without the ext drive attached and once system is back up, connect your ext drive and go to windows explorer and then right click on the new drive and choose format.
-Once formatted, you will be able to use this drive as a storage drive or whatever you like
My interpretation was that he bought the external drive enclosure in an effort to read the inaccessible data on another PC. Since the Vista PC can't read the drive, it wants to format it, which would lose all the data he is trying to recover. At least that is how I read it.
WallyH

As far as the xp system, do the repair installation

As far as connecting ext drive to vista machine, go to windows explorer and right click on the ext drive and choose format

With this drive formatted, it will do no good on xp machine if the xp machine will not boot

Yes WallyH yours is the correct interpretation!

Ive been doing a bit more research and I'm wondering now if I should just do a repair with my windows XP disk.

You see my c: with has crashed is partitioned 74Gb and 6Gb and now I've connected it to my Vista machine via the external enclosure its only showing me the 6Gb partition!

How odd!

Yes WallyH yours is the correct interpretation!

Ive been doing a bit more research and im wondering now if I should just do a repair with my windows XP disk.

You see my c: with has crashed is partitioned 74Gb and 6Gb and now ive connected it to my Vista machine via the external enclosure its only showing me the 6Gb partition!!

How odd!
It sounds like your primary partition is hosed. The reason I suggested SpinRite (I have no financial interest in this company!) is that it can fix sector or even bit-level problems with hard drives. There are numerous examples of SpinRite fixing a drive that you cannot boot of off. My fear is that if you attempt a "Windows Repair" procedure, you could irretrievably lose the data on it. Note: I'm not the Windows expert, so I can't say for sure how big this risk is.

I'm glad I'm not in your shoes!
WallyH