XP won't boot, help me rescue the favorites

[mattg2k4]

My copy of windows xp pro spontaneously stopped booting a bit ago, giving the error "hal.dll not found," or something along those lines. Since it was my backup computer anyway, I don't need it up and running in an instant. However, there were some Internet Explorer favorites on there that I would very much like to retrieve, but I think reinstalling windows again would write over the favorites, since it would presumably reinstall internet explorer as well.

So my question is, what's the best way to get the favorites off of this computer?

Thanks!

[Nuclear Krusader]

If you reinstall over the previous installation or use the repair console the Favorites will not be touched. They will only be gone if you reformat the drive, but I don't think there's need of that.

However, I share your view of better be safe than sorry.

So, just hook up the drive as slave to another XP computer and you will find your Favorites in this location:

X:\Documents and Settings\Your user name\Favorites

Where X is the slave drive letter.

[reboot]

If the drive is FAT32, and not NTFS, you can boot to any startup disk, and the stuff you want is in c:\windows\favori~1
Just copy them to floppy.

[mattg2k4]

I don't have a floppy drive in that computer at the moment, but I took your suggestion Nuclear Krusader, and it worked just fine.

I have now reinstalled windows, and determined that the favorites were still present afterwards, but I like to be sure.

Thanks for the replies!