On 24.11.2005 6:16, LoriNTroy wrote:
> Help!! I only know enough to be dangerous. My old Dell laptop is having
> spasms...will only sign on to the Windows XP "loading"page and go no further.
> Is there any way I can hook a USB cable up between the lap top and my desk
> top and copy the C drive, or at least some folders FROM the C drive? There
> are somethings I would like to recover, but not for the $500 price the data
> recovery company wants!!
>
> thanks

I have had one dead notebook drive. if everything fails, you may yet try
this: (it was like a mirecle, helped me, and i got all my data back!)

1. buy a coverter from notebook harddisk to IDE (it costs about $10 or
so, but if you tell them you will buy another harddrive from them after,
they might borrow you the adapter for free of charge
2. connect the notebook hardrive to extra IDE cable, it should be
detected on boot by bios and then you shoud see it as another letter in
windows explorer normally without any drivers.
3. if bios (and window also then) will fail to detect the harddrive, be
sure you have set in bios the AUTO option for secondary IDE (or where
you are going to connect it)
4. if it won't help, place the harddisk to a freezer for 15 minutes or
so (no, i'm not kidding!) and then connect to ide again. now you should
be lucky. hurry up, because as temperature raises, the harddisk becomes
unreadable once again, so maybe you will have to repeat that freezer
trick more times before you will be able to copy everything

Good luck,
Y.