Data Transfer Help

[Hethor]

Hey guys, my father's ancient windows xp computer is acting very strange. It'll boot up, but then freeze and just stay on the sand glass icon. There is important tax information and programs on the harddrive that needs to be recovered. I've attempted to put the harddrive into a vista machine to transfer the data (I can see the HDD in my computer, but only certain files will copy over to the new machine). I also tried booting the new computer from the old hdd, and it shows similar problems (unable to do anything once it boots up). Is there a way to get the data off the old hdd? My father is planning on bringing it in tomorrow to a local computer shop that will "put windows 7 on the old harddrive and transfer the data over." Any advice would be helpful, thanks.

[Masark]

Try using a linux live CD like Knoppix on the old computer and see if you copy the files you want onto a thumb drive or external hard drive.

[Javelin3o4]

I would take a look at the motherboard and make sure it doesnt have any bad capacitors before taking it in. I run into alot of older xp machines that have random freezing, booting issues and they end up have bad capacitors (I see this alot on old Dell Dimension desktops) I honestly would just buy a new computer then fix an old XP box. If he wants a Windows 7 machine HP announced that they are now selling machines with Windows 7 pre-loaded again.

But as suggested you could try a Linux Live CD. (I use Ubuntu) but the freezing issue could also be due to a bad drive which may be why can only get certain data.

[Hethor]

Thanks for the advice, besides the core components I'm still pretty new to computers. How would I determine if a capacitor is bad? Also I'd give the linux disk a try, however, now it won't even boot past the log in screen. It gives stuck on "Loading Personal data..." It's an old 80gb drive so it may very well just be bad.

[2legit2quit]

With a Linux boot CD, set the BIOS boot order to boot from the CD/DVD drive before the HDD. Then, you will just the file explorer in Linux to get the files you need (if they are retrievable).

As far as capacitors go, bad ones look like they are bulging or misshaped, possibly with residue on it if the shell cracked.

Will the machine boot into Safe Mode? To do so, restart the computer and spam-click F8 on your keyboard until the prompt menu comes up and select Safe Mode.

[Hethor]

Ah, i may give that a shot. That's similar to what I did in vista, but it copied about half the files over.. and the other half (programs and such) started to copy then the process suddenly quit. I'll look at the capacitors. I booted into safe mode, but it's still the same story.

[ocis]

If you tried loading your dad's hard drive on a different machine and are running into the same issues then it's not a matter of your dad's motherboard. Do you see all the files you want to copy over when you do so? Sometimes when you try to copy the data en masse you end up trying to place data into folders that are restricted by your current computer. Keep in mind that some programs you simply can't copy over as they require registry entries - these programs will have to be re-installed.

Since the issue with the hard drive seems to travel with you it is a data/hard drive issue, and doesn't have anything to do with any other part of each pc (yourss or your dad's). One issue is that it could just be bit rot of the OS files or the files you want to copy over. Another is actual physical damage to the disks on the hard drive, which also will cause files to become corrupt. If you are attempting to copy over a large portion of data, once the OS hits a corrupted file or a bad sector it will hang as it struggles to find a way to copy the data over, which also hangs everything else behind it as well in the queue, so maybe try copying over smaller chunks of data at a time. After that, if you really still want all that data back your best bet is to try and use some data recovery software to see what can be salvaged.