my computer is crashing!!!

[TKpervert]

ain't life a bitch

then it becomes a real 'DOG' when your faithful old computer decides to take a vacation.
If you suffered a hard-drive crash, there are companies that specialize in recovering data from toasted drives. Here's one:

http://www.drivesavers.com/

I used Google to search on 'hard drive recovery'.
I'm sure you can find a company close to where you live.

If it's not a hard drive crash, you can probably install your current hard drive into a (*cough* new machine) as the primary drive or a slave drive and lose NOTHING ! NOTHING, I SAY !!!

And, as your mom always intoned... backup backup backup backup...
and she wasn't talking about parallel parking.

 

[TummyDragon]

Ah, yeah, then taking it in is the best course. They should be able to retrieve all of your pictures without a problem as long as the disk itself is not physically damaged. Data retrieval is a very simple procedure.

Sorry the registry restore thing didn't help. Sometimes that little trick can be a lifesaver.

Jpie is correct in that you can copy files the old fashioned way from the dos prompt. If you can boot to a dos prompt, you can most certainly get your pictures.

If the people you take the computer to tell you they can't retrieve your existing data, it certainly wouldn't hurt to bring it home and let her walk you through the copy process, and then take it back to let them fix it. Sometimes, especially with a warranty issue, the technicians are told to spend the absolute least amount of time possible on the repair. This usually means they'll reformat the drive and reinstall the factory setup from their master cd. Then they'll just tell you "sorry, the data couldn't be retrieved" when in reality they never attempted to retrieve it. I'm not saying this is what they are certain to do, but it's something to keep in mind.

TummyDragon, I restored the registry to one that was a year old (it was either that or the day the trouble started. were the only choices it gave me). no go. 🙁 then I ran registry checker (scanreg/fix). it told me it was fixed. it lied.

thanks for the info tho. I was always afraid to go near registry stuff but figured in this case... I couldn't make it any worse.

 

[Ayla ny]

just wanted to say thank you to all those who tried to help. I ended up having to reformat after all. because my Windows wouldn’t even recognize that I had CD drives at all... I had to go into my bios (registry, bios, and settings... oh my!) and have it boot up from the CD drive.

down side: I lost everything.

up side: I have a (just about) brand new computer now.

thanks for all of your help tho. at least I felt sure that I had exhausted all of my options before reformatting.

 

[TicklingDuo]

Sorry to hear you lost things, Ayla. But, I'm glad to see ya back.

Ann