2young2care
Technical User
Here goes.
I have a 2.8 P4 in a custom tower running (or was) XP Pro.
I had a problem with a virus and when I tried to correct it, all of the sudden I would get an error saying windows couldn't verify my license, and I would have to re-activate. No problem. But the machine wouldn't do ANYTHING! No matter what I selected, Internet/telephone/no, and no matter how many times I clicked on "Next" (the button even depressed and it looked like it functioned, ie not frozen) or how long I let the computer work, (over an hour) it would not move. Nothing. No safe mode.
So I went to the cd and I tried Recovery console. Did nothing. So I tried repairing windows by going through the "Install . . .", "F8" and "Repair existing . . ." but then it tried to completely reinstall Windows XP! I DO NOT WANT TO LOOSE MY DATA! So now my computer is all screwed up. The new install is screwed up, so my only option remains is to reinstall Windows XP Pro and lose ALL of my files.
So this is my dilemma. And this is what I was thinking. I have been going to buy a larger hard drive anyway. Would it be possible to remove my current harddrive, replace it with a new one, load XP onto this new hard drive, then put my old hard drive in as a slave? Would I at least be able to get my data off of the drive so I can wipe it and start over? Or is my only recourse to take it to a PC Repair shop to recover, and even then would they be able to recover anything? Were not really talking about a lot of data, maybe something like 3-5 gig.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated! Thanks.
I have a 2.8 P4 in a custom tower running (or was) XP Pro.
I had a problem with a virus and when I tried to correct it, all of the sudden I would get an error saying windows couldn't verify my license, and I would have to re-activate. No problem. But the machine wouldn't do ANYTHING! No matter what I selected, Internet/telephone/no, and no matter how many times I clicked on "Next" (the button even depressed and it looked like it functioned, ie not frozen) or how long I let the computer work, (over an hour) it would not move. Nothing. No safe mode.
So I went to the cd and I tried Recovery console. Did nothing. So I tried repairing windows by going through the "Install . . .", "F8" and "Repair existing . . ." but then it tried to completely reinstall Windows XP! I DO NOT WANT TO LOOSE MY DATA! So now my computer is all screwed up. The new install is screwed up, so my only option remains is to reinstall Windows XP Pro and lose ALL of my files.
So this is my dilemma. And this is what I was thinking. I have been going to buy a larger hard drive anyway. Would it be possible to remove my current harddrive, replace it with a new one, load XP onto this new hard drive, then put my old hard drive in as a slave? Would I at least be able to get my data off of the drive so I can wipe it and start over? Or is my only recourse to take it to a PC Repair shop to recover, and even then would they be able to recover anything? Were not really talking about a lot of data, maybe something like 3-5 gig.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated! Thanks.