Oh windows 7 how I love you, or not.

[NeonSamurai]

The files are not as of yet lost. From the sounds of it either windows or some hardware on that computer are screwed up. I cannot tell which it is from what you have told me though. I also assume that safe mode is non functional.

There are a couple ways of approaching this. First question is if this is a laptop or a desktop. If it's a desktop then you can take the hard drive out and plug it into another computer with a working windows OS and backup the files, or do the option for the laptop.

If it is a laptop you will need to use a bootable disk that can read ntfs file systems. Backup software often comes with such disks and can have a gui interface. I could also poke around the net for something like that that is free. Once you have such a disk (or usb key), you will need an external drive to backup the files to.

A system restore may or may not fix the problem (nor may a repair disk) depending on what the problem is exactly. I would suggest doing a manual backup beforehand just in case.


I strongly recommend that everyone should have an external hard drive as a backup. I have 3 myself.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by NeonSamurai

I strongly recommend that everyone should have an external hard drive as a backup. I have 3 myself.

Voila! Like me! Each of them holds one Acronis-made and one Windows-made backup.