question about the best way to do this: I have an old 2005 HP pavilion laptop with windows XP mediacenter 2005, that my kids use. Out of the blue, it won't boot up. when i turn on the power, the lights on the keyboard come on , I hear the computer start, but all I get is a black screen with a small flashing cursor on the top left corner. If I hit F10 during the start up I can get to BIOS and that seems fine, but once I close BIOS it just hangs on the flashing cursor. I don't want to really fix this thing - cheaper to buy netbook for my kids anyways - and likely faster. But the thing is my kids have some old school videos and father's day videos, etc downloaded on this. so I just want it to boot up one more time..... I know in the old days I would use a bootup disk to at least get it to start and hopefully fix the bug... but nowadays they don't send a reinstall disk. any suggestions... (i did find this link on google and think I might try it, or should I just pay $50-80 bucks for some computer repair shop to fix).... http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3580548/Windows_XP_Media_Center_Edition_2005_OEM thanks
your best bet to recover your stuff is to boot using a live version of ubuntu. http://www.ubuntu.com/ if you can get into your bios you need to make sure you set it to boot from cd/dvd drive first then put in the cd and wait for it to load. You should get into the ubuntu desktop and be able to save whatever is still on your hard disk.
if i do this: could I get all my files backed up and then restore windows to an earlier date through ubuntu? or will I have to reinstall windows....
Fix Windows via a repair install: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/helpandsupport/learnmore/tips/doug92.mspx Re Ubuntu: Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. It's another operating system. You put it into your disc drive on start-up, boot into it. Once you're in the Ubuntu operating system, you'll have a desktop and a file browser you can use to open your Windows files. Get a USB drive and copy your old files. Here's a video: <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/p6TBuab-EPw?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/p6TBuab-EPw?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object> It may be a bit complex and you'll have to learn stuff you'd probably find little use for if all you want to do is to open your Windows files but I can vouch that it does work.
Get an XP DVD/CD and do a restore or else remove the hard drive from the laptop and hook it up to an external drive and backup if you can't fix it.
Do not reinstall windows because it will wipe out all your stuff. I think if you do have Windows 7 and have enough space it will backup all your old stuff into a folder and install Windows on drive C with a backup folder name something like Windows.Old.
