Rescuing Data From Hard Disk?

[sms747]

l have an acer laptop running vista, suddenly it tries to boot up from widows xp embeded which I did not know was even on there. Going into the bios vista is not listed as an os, it will not allow starting from safe mode or running promt. It will not boot from xp and I need to get a lot of jpegs off the hard disk which I am sure is OK, what are the options? Is there a place in bkk I could take it to? had some backed up but not all.

[Darrel]

You should be able to boot the machine using a Linux (Ubuntu) Live CD. This will not alter the drive in any way (as long as you only boot using it, and dont try and install it). You can do this yourself quite easily.

Once it has booted you may be able to see your files from within the Ubuntu file manager. If you can then you can export them to an external device of some type (USB drive).

Failing that, best remove the hard drive, put it in a USB caddy and see what is accessible when it is connected to another working Windows machine. There are several bits of software that can retrieve damaged files or repair damaged partitions, but it is best to run them on drives that are NOT the boot drive.

[sms747]

You should be able to boot the machine using a Linux (Ubuntu) Live CD. This will not alter the drive in any way (as long as you only boot using it, and dont try and install it). You can do this yourself quite easily.

Once it has booted you may be able to see your files from within the Ubuntu file manager. If you can then you can export them to an external device of some type (USB drive)

Thanks Darrel I will have a go with your sugestions, pretty sure the drive was OK and the files, just the OS that screwed up despite tune up utilities saying it was all OK. I do remember a message the day before saying COM something in system 32 was quitiing, so I guess it might be something there that was to blame, cheers.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

Full model number of ACER machine?

[Darrel]

I should add that the "embedded" XP you saw was probably the factory restore programme trying to do its job and rewrite the Vista image. Acer puts this on a small hidden partition. On Acers, it can normally be accessed manually by hitting Alt+F10 immediately after the POST.

It is important NOT to let it do this until you have made every attempt to extract your important data.

[pomchop]

There is a guy named Woody in Pantip plaza who saved all my data for me when i had hard drive problems. He used to work in Singapore and speaks pretty good english...his tel number is 085 100 0811 or 086 030 1168

he did a good job for me and very fair price....his shop is on 2nd or 3rd floor but i can't remember the name...good luck