New Computer w/ Old Hard Drive Problem

[rockman_d]

Long story short: my motherboard fried leading me to upgrade everything except my hard drive and DVD drive. I knew I'd encounter problems booting with my old hard drive on an entirely new system, but I thought if i booted up in safe mode I could delete any old drivers and start fresh. Apparently I was wrong.

When I first booted up my new computer, I recieved the message that Windows XP was not shutdown properly and given five different boot-up options: 3 safe modes, last known working config, & normal. Regardless of which I chose, once the Windows logo appeared, my computer would reboot. At first I figured my hard drive got fried as well, but after researching similar situations, I realize it is a configuration problem.

I now realize my best bet is to reformat my hard drive and do everything from scratch, but I'd first like to recover my data from the hard drive. Is it possible to do this on my new system?

 

[g-paw]

Easiest way to do this would be to put it in another computer as the second drive and then copy the data to the hdd with the OS/programs.

 

[ethel]

You don't have to reformat your hard drive - if you install Windows again it will only overwrite your Windows and perhaps Documents and Settings directories - unless you explicitly tell it to reformat.

If that's an issue, you could do what g-paw says, or you could use a bootable CD Linux distribution to access your hard drive.

 

[Guest]

I have the same problem. I've already tried booting from the old hard drive. But now I have a new computer. I tried putting my old hard drive in the my new computer, but the plug-ins for the old hard drive aren't in this computer. It uses a different type of hard drive. I'm lost too.