Safe Mode and the bsod!

[draconis1410]

Ok my girlfriend has a Compaq Celeron with win Xp home Seagate barracuda 40gb HD

What happened is that when I turn on the computer, i get routed to the screen where i pick safe modes and last config page...but when I choose any of the safe modes I get a black screen with tons of Drivers listed. from the windows folder. and from there on it stalls. if i choose last config it just stalls and does nothing. So i want to know what I can do to save the infomation inside, IF i even can...

[Panama Red]

Did she get an XP disk with the pc? Or a recovery disk? Or no disk at all, in which case it has a recovery partition.

[draconis1410]

i dont want to delete everything and start over. I want to know if i can recover the data even though i cant get in the system.

[Panama Red]

You can try slaving her hard drive to a different machine and copying the files you want to keep. That will work for pics, music, and data filles but not for installed programs. The reason I asked about the disks is to determine which way to direct you. If you have an XP disk, you can try a repair install following the guide in our Tips and Tricks section. That will repair XP without messing with the installed programs or personal data. You should still use the slave/copy method to prevent any loss before trying any recovery/repair.

[draconis1410]

OK thanks didnt think about the repair feature on the XP disk