Im about to lose all of my personal and nightwatch work.

Don't have a clue...

Put the hard drive into another computer?

Oh man, that sounds bad. Any backups?

you can go to the windows recovery console and recover files....but i dont know what you would recover them to. i doubt a floppy will hold what you need

Quote from Taylor

Put the hard drive into another computer?

was gonna suggest that

sounds like the easiest way to me

Get another hard drive it doesn't have to be big and put windows on it, any version, then make the old HDD a slave and the new one a master and just copy over from the new drive. You might have to buy a new HDD if you don't have another but its a solution that would work. I had the same thing happen to me last month.

You could try accessing your files using a Linux live cd. (like Knoppix)

ya make it a slave in another computer or use the recovery console, you can even repair your windows installation in the Xp boot cd (act like youre going to install and press R when it says)

Doesnt DOS work ? Cant u boot up windows with security mode on ?

You can try doing a soft install of winxp. Assuming it's a retail CD, you can just do a soft install that way, or just do a normal install(where the installer basically removes all of your user profiles, and the windows directory and every trace of windows... this doesn't remove any user files outside of the "Documents and Settings" folder or the windows folder). Then you can put the cd key back in... if you don't want to activate it, you don't have to since it gives you 30 days to activate it. Also, if you activate it over the phone, you'll get a confirmation number which you can use indefinately as well, as opposed to activating it online which keeps track how many times you have activated that particular product. This is also assuming you're using windows xp. Heh.

If that fails, like everyone else said... put it into another computer. If you don't like that, try using knoppix and copying everything that way. Knoppix is great, and I use it for some of the same reasons you're having right now. It's basically an operating system that runs straight from the cd, so it doesn't take up any harddrive space at all. If you want to try this approach, head to knoppix.org and download an ISO.

Quote from jaardsi

You could try accessing your files using a Linux live cd. (like Knoppix)

linux or slave it.

Quote from OL

ya make it a slave in another computer

This is the best way. Do that, get your important files off and then tamper with your os. I would just do a complete reinstall of xp.

Quote from jaardsi

You could try accessing your files using a Linux live cd. (like Knoppix)

Ditto that run linux off the CD grab all the files you can.

magnets.... really BIG magnets.

SLAVE

put your head next to the hard drive and let it tell you whats wrong

i had the same problem at one time, i was about to lose all work and source for a medal of honor mod. i booted up linux with a recovery cd, and then ftp'ed the stuff to my xbox. im sure you could ftp it to anything though.

When my hdd got borked all I did was a reboot and then windows didnt find my HDD, then when i tried to access the HDD all it wanted was to fomrat it :\. So i took out the HDD and placed it in a freinds computer and then we used Easy recovery in it and i got back about 80% of all my webpages and just about all my mapping stuff (expect for all my RMFs bye bye de_fender)

So my advise is, get the files before its too late.