[MJDore]

My desktop entered Standby as usual yesterday with a few windows open (IE, My Computer). Later, when I went to bring it back up again it shut down on its own. Now, when I turn the power back on, XP will not load. I get the normal chipset screen with the option to enter BIOS but then nothing but a black screen.

I've tried two things:

1) I attempted to hit F8 and boot in safe mode. It gave me the option to do so but after I hit enter to use safe mode the CPU just froze and nothing happened.
2) I changed the boot priority in BIOS to use the Recovery CD that came with my PC and it reads it. I do as it says and hit a key to start the CD but it just hangs with the following message, "Obtaining system configurations" or something to that effect. I actually let this run for upwards of an hour but it did nothing. The CD stopped spinning and the HD was idle...

I'm stumped and desperate for help....thanks for this great site!

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Looks like you have Harddisk problems.
Are there any repair or check tools on your recovery CD ?

[RaaF]

Looks like you have Harddisk problems.
Are there any repair or check tools on your recovery CD ?

[MJDore]

That's what I was afraid of. So, I guess my next question would be...how recoverable is the info I have on the HD? Pics and documents are my main concerns. Any tried and true methods?

[RaaF]

Well, you have some options.
-You could use a Windows XP installation CD from someone and try to fix things with it.
-You could Google for a recovery prog that runs from diskette
-You could remove the HD and put it in a other computer that has WinXP or 2000 on it and see if you can acces it to save data.

But it all depends on how damaged your HD is.