I was downloading Windows Media Player 11 on my HP Compaq Presario with XP, when suddenly it went totally dark. Nothing comes on a completely dark screen and the PC tower went as if dead. You know that little flashing light on front of HP tower? Well it just went a steady glow, no flickering like before when hard drive was working on something.
On bottom of the black screen was "system restore press F10" but nothing happens.
It remains totally out of commission. I'm using my Gateway now, with Vista, but the HP with XP has all my documents, addresses, emails, pictures on picasa, etc. I can't believe I've now lost all that. Is it even worth calling the Geek Squad? Should I just count it as a tremendous? Have I totally destroyed the machine or is it at all possible to fix and get back to running?
Thanks
Desperate,
Richka

Groan.

If you power down the computer and turn it on again, do you see anything on the monitor? Can you get into the BIOS? That should be independent of Windows (Usually hit <F1>, <F2> or some other key combination just as it starts to boot).

I don't see how Windows Media Player 11 could blow everything out. Could this be a coincidence?

Usually, reinstalling Windows will get computer back up and running. You have to use another computer to read the data from your hard drive, however.

I'm thinking that something went kablooey in the Motherboard. That is replaceable and possibly the hard drive is still OK. If this is beyond your expertise, and you don't have a friend to help you then the Geek Squad might be one place to go.

I have another computer, in fact, the one I am using now. But HOW could I read the data from the hard drive that's on the other one. By a cable connecting? Could you explain how I could do that?

Yes but HOW could I transfer data from the crashed computer. By cable connecting? Can you explain how? Thanks. Richka

You need to pull the hard drive from the old computer and see if you can connect it to the cable of the new computer. If you can, then it will be loaded and you should be able to read it and copy from it.

Now for the disclaimer. There are two common types of disk interfaces. Both types of disks will have a power cord with a four-pin connector (not all of the pins are used). Both will have another cable. That other cable is the data cable. One type of disk drive is an "IDE" or "ATA" hard drive. The cable connecting to that is a 40-pin ribbon cable end. The other type of drive is "Serial ATA" or "SATA". That will have a small cable going from the computer to the motherboard and a rather smaller, multi-pin connector going to the hard drive.

Most computers still have IDE CD-ROM drives, so if that is the type you have, you can simply disconnect a CD-ROM drive and connect the hard drive. If that isn't possible, a single IDE interface can control two devices. Some IDE cables have two connectors on them. If you have one that doesn't have two connectors, you can find a replacement cable and plug both drives into them. There's a configuration problem (Master/Slave) that you have to solve, but hard drives have a "Cable Select" jumper (see the outside of the drive to learn how to configure it). If you set the hard drives to "Cable Select", you can usually connect without problems.

If it's an SATA hard drive, you have to hope that there is a free SATA port in the motherboard to plug it into. You'll have to take the cable and the hard drive from the old computer and plug it into the new one.

Agreeing that dowloading the file itself did not cause this, something inside the computer has died.

You can try moving the old hard drive to a new computer and seeing if it will read the data, but if that fails or the connectors are not compatible it's time to take it to a PC repair place.