[cinlizzle]

I realize I may sound idiotic, but windows vista won't boot past the bar - it goes to a black screen with moveable arrow. When trying to boot in safe mode, it won't make it past crcdisk.sys. I've tried to use Installation Disk to repair computer. Tried startup repair, system restore (it tells me I have no restore points - I've used them before, don't know what happened). Dell told walked me through several diagnostic tests, and no errors were found. So I was told Vista was probably corrupted and I had to do a factory restore.

I have files I REALLY don't want to wipe out. Is there any way to back them up? Could I install Ubuntu and back them up?

Any help would be appreciated.

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Hello,
Is it possable for you to remove the hard drive and put it in another machine to pull the files off?
If not you may try a parallel instalation.
This is for XP but should work for Vista as well.
Parallel Installation of Windows XP

Boot to the Windows XP installation cd by pressing a key when the "Press any key to boot from cd" prompt appears at the top of the screen.

• At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press Enter to set up Windows XP.
• Accept the License Agreement by pressing F8
• With your current installation selected in the box, press Esc
• Select C: Partition1 [NTFS] in the box and press Enter
• To continue setup using this partition, press C
• Now you should see formatting options...choose the last one, Leave the current file system intact (no changes), and press Enter
• To use a different folder, press Esc
• Name the folder WINDOWS0 (just type a 0 (zero)) and press Enter

The Windows installation should begin. This will install Windows to a new folder, leaving your data intact. Any programs installed on the old directory will have to be reinstalled to the new one. Device drivers will also have to be installed for all the hardware to work as it should.

The data will be located in the Documents and Settings folder (C:\Documents and Settings) under your old user account name...so when you set up the new installation, give yourself a slightly different user account name.

[hfcg]

Hello,
Is it possable for you to remove the hard drive and put it in another machine to pull the files off?
If not you may try a parallel instalation.
This is for XP but should work for Vista as well.
Parallel Installation of Windows XP

Boot to the Windows XP installation cd by pressing a key when the "Press any key to boot from cd" prompt appears at the top of the screen.

• At the "Welcome to Setup" screen, press Enter to set up Windows XP.
• Accept the License Agreement by pressing F8
• With your current installation selected in the box, press Esc
• Select C: Partition1 [NTFS] in the box and press Enter
• To continue setup using this partition, press C
• Now you should see formatting options...choose the last one, Leave the current file system intact (no changes), and press Enter
• To use a different folder, press Esc
• Name the folder WINDOWS0 (just type a 0 (zero)) and press Enter

The Windows installation should begin. This will install Windows to a new folder, leaving your data intact. Any programs installed on the old directory will have to be reinstalled to the new one. Device drivers will also have to be installed for all the hardware to work as it should.

The data will be located in the Documents and Settings folder (C:\Documents and Settings) under your old user account name...so when you set up the new installation, give yourself a slightly different user account name.

[cinlizzle]

I need to ponder this until it sinks in. :-) I have a geeky neighbor who might can take my hard drive out and save my files. Nothings ever easy anymore is it? THANKS for answering so fast

[hfcg]

I have a geeky neighbor who might can take my hard drive out and save my files

This is the best way.

[cinlizzle]

I'm back again. No luck with my friend. Should I try to get a boot cd for vista? I found bartpe, but not for vista. Could someone give me a safe place to download such a boot cd? If I can go in and back up my files, I don't mind doing another install of vista. Just can't get to my files.