restoring XP or recovering data from notebook hard drive

[jb9]

I have run into a problem with my Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook, and I know that was a popular computer on these forums and that some of you know orders of magnitude more than I do about these things, so I was hoping to get some advice.

Quick summary:

I cannot boot XP Pro, don’t have an installation disk, and want to recover some data from the drive before trying anything drastic (e.g., reformatting and installing a new OS). Would love advice on restoring XP from Recovery Console or using another PC to recover data from the hard drive.

Verbose version:

Windows XP Pro has become corrupt and won’t boot. It goes just past the “press F3” for setup screen and then becomes a black screen with an error message stating that it cannot start because “hal.dll is missing”. This happened after a couple of crashes, errors (didn't really pay attention to what they were [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]), and reboots. Accessing Setup indicates that all the hardware is present and functioning.

There are some data files (Word, Excel, database, MP3 files, etc.) that I have not backed up that I would absolutely hate to lose, so data recovery is a priority. Most of these are in folders or subfolders within the Desktop, in case that matters.

I don’t have a Windows installation CD because Dell didn’t give me one (they didn’t give them out with some systems). The instructions from Dell suggest using the XP restore feature to fix XP; they offer no advice about what to do if you can’t boot XP to access the restore feature (not sure if Dell has rethought this amazingly stupid policy or not...).

I do, however, have a Windows XP Home installation CD from another computer, and by booting from the Windows XP Home CD, I was able to get to the Recovery Console.

I tried using “bootcfg /rebuild” but got the message “Error: Failed to successfully scan disks for windows installations. This error may be caused by a corrupt file system... use chkdsk to detect any errors”

chkdsk told me “the volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems”

dir calls up what looks like the appropriate mix of files.

I checked the boot.ini file and that seems OK.

cd seems to be disabled in Recovery Console so I could not confirm or deny the existence of hal.dll.

I’ve been doing some web searches, and it looks like I can try using the fixmbr, then fixboot, then try bookcfg again in Recovery Console. That may or may not help, but I’m not sure if this could make data recovery more difficult.

I could try to use the Setup feature on the Windows XP Home CD to try to repair the XP Pro system on the computer, but I suspect that won’t work, will destroy data, or both.

I could just try installing Windows XP Home, but I’m almost sure I will lose my data then.

I have another PC available, so perhaps it would be possible for me to use that to recover data directly from the hard drive, but I’m not even sure where to begin with that approach.

Any thoughts about an intelligent course of action? I'm willing to put some time and effort into this, but if it is a lost cause and I should just pay an expert to retrieve my data or accept losing it, I don't want to beat my head against the wall too long before deciding.

You can add me to the ever growing list of fools who don’t back up their data often enough. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]