Laptop won't boot to windows help
 

So a file required to boot windows is corrupt and now I can't even get to my desktop. I'm going to do a clean install of windows 7 but I need the files on my hard drive before I do that.

How can I retrieve those files and transfer them to another computer? Is it as simple as taking out the hard drive and then using a USB to SATA cable to hook that hard drive up to another laptop?

And if ever, is there a good place in Richmond that can do this for me for a reasonable price?

Yeah, you can take out the drive and hook it up to another computer, as you mentioned. It's really simple; you could do it yourself. Just get the cable from NCIX etc.

Another method is booting with a version of Linux and copying the files onto a USB. There are versions of Linux available for download, that boot from a CD or USB.

It'll function just like an external hard drive then right? So just copy past important stuff and I'm good to go?

is this XP? if you still have an XP install disc try booting from it and hitting R for the recovery console. Then do a 'chkdsk'.

i'd say about 50% of the non-bootable XP installs i've seen can be recovered with a simple chkdsk.

Yeah, that's pretty much what external hard drives are. An internal HD + enclosure(the cable integrated with the case).

laptop drives are usual 2.5" in size.. but modern ones are just your typical sata ones that will fit in most desktops

easiest is to download Ubuntu and burn it to disk, boot that up and go get the files you need, copy them to anotehr external drive or thumb drive, reinstall windows.

important" if you hook an external drive/thumbdrive to Ubuntu, it has to be safety removed from Windows before you plug it in. If you just yanked it out of the previous machine, it's a bit more of a hassle to get Ubuntu to read it.

can you do a restore to previously working state?

or you have a large flash disk and your laptop allows booting to flash drives, install windows to your flash drive and boot off it..

or a LIVE CD version of windows...

Thanks for all the suggestions guys.

It was actually easier than I thought... I took out the hard drive and copied all the important files but it was actually unnecessary because when I reinstalled windows there was a folder called windows.old that had all my old data on it. So I did not actually need to take out the hard drive at all.