software for repairing hard disc that wont boot windows?

Doosht

Doosht

Doosht

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Is there any software that can help recover a laptops main hard drive.

Basically when its switched on it errors once passed the boot screen and mentions disk error and ctrl alt del.

Any nifty bits of software out there that may be able to help or do i have to format and install xp again?

TIA

Doosht
 
Attach the laptop hard disk via a 2.5" IDE convertor to your main pc and attempt to repair it using windows error check etc or retain as much important files & folders as you can.

If you cant do this, try a windows repair.
 
Whatever you do, don't format the drive otherwise you'll make retrieving your data much more difficult.

You can use a Windows Preinstallation Environment (Win PE) to access a borked install of Windows by running a lightweight version of the OS from a CD or DVD. There are commercial versions available such as Winternals Emergency Recovery Disk or WinPE, otherwise BartPE is a free alternative.

Otherwise, you can do the same things from a Linux Live CD, if you know how to use basic unix commands such as mounting a drive, etc...

Lastly, if you don't fancy doing all that, just try to re-install Windows on the same drive and it should (hopefully) recognise that there's already an OS, albeit a fubar'ed one, on the drive and ask you if you want to repair it - this will isntall Windows over the top of the old version but won't format the drive and won't touch any data in any other folders, including the My Documents folders.
 
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