I temporarily moved critical data and graphic files from a slow Me desktop to a healthy HP Pavilion ze5185 laptop with XP Home Edition for safekeeping. Now, laptop hangs while loading XP Home Edition. F2, F8 & F10 functions work but no options help to complete the process so I can offload the saved files. (I know, I should have backed up to CDs)
Tech at CompUSA offered a 5% chance of recovery noting that any other operating system but XP would be pretty simple. Placing my laptop hard drive into another unit confirmed the drive is okay, the data can be seen but he could not move off more than a couple of files.
Since there is no Book Disk capability within XP and installing an XP Upgrade will erase the hard drive, I plan to download the six XP Setup Disks from Microsoft but am told this will not be sufficient. Incidentally, Microsoft says this is the last offering of boot diskettes for operating systems. Future operating system boots will come from the CD.
My next hope is a new acquaintance that says I can use his device connected to my desktop and make a slave of the ze5185 laptop to retrieve the data.
Any suggestions for getting the XP system running long enough for me to backup to CDs or low/no cost data retrieval will be appreciated.
