How to replace Windows, rescue your data, etc.
Have you had your comp crash, only to try booting it up, and get an error message instead? Windows can't find NTLDR or HAL.DLL or whatever its excuse is this time.
Your computer is telling you, quite simply, that Windows just shat itself.
So, let's say that it will loom in your future, because you really don't know otherwise, do you? You'll have two options, maybe three. One, you could take it to the computer repair place. Spend over a hundred bucks to save your data -- your bookmarks, art, writing, school assignments, MP3s, whatever you might've had on there. There's no guarantee you'll get to keep all of it; unless they do a 1:1 hard drive to disc image, they might miss something somewhere. Or they'll let you sit down and pick out what files and folders you want to keep. Do you really want anyone but yourself seeing what's on your computer? And it's expensive, and you'll have to wait until Tuesday to pick it up again, likely.
Two, you could have a friend who's into comps basically do the same thing as the repair shop will, but maybe for free. But you're still at their mercy. Maybe they don't have time just then? Or maybe you just don't want to impose? Can't say I blame you. Besides, there's still the privacy issue.
Third, and by far my favorite: Fix it yourself. It isn't as hard as you think. It really isn't. The computer repair shops charge people a lot of money to do this... because they can, as far as I can tell.
Obviously, I'm going to try explaining the third option there. :)
So, assuming that your Windows isn't failing due to the hard drive itself dying (in which case, you'll need another hard drive to transfer your stuff to) you'll want to start with simply backing stuff up. In fact, if the drive itself is dying, you'll still want to back stuff up.
Two ways of going about this: One, you can copy it all to another hard drive, or two, boot it up off a cd and push everything aside and sort it out later, keeping it on the same hard drive. Essentially, reinstall Windows without reformatting.
There's a few ways of going about that first option, too. You can take out the problem hard drive and stick it into another computer as a secondary drive, and read it like that. You can take it out of the computer and plug it up to another computer as an external USB drive (meaning, you don't need to open up your second computer; useful if you're doing this on two laptops, or borrowing someone else's computer to do the copying since yours is dead!) You can even boot your computer up off a CD and copy the files to an external USB drive that way. Or if you've got a desktop with more than one physical hard drive, you can boot it up off the disc and copy it to that other hard drive then.
Anything having to do with that boot CD, I'll get to in a minute.
Let's assume you only have the defunct computer, and are going to take the hard drive out of yours and read it on a computer you're willing to open up and stick your drive in. The only issue I would warn about is if you're trying to put a laptop hard drive into a desktop PC. But that's doable, actually. There are adapters for that, if you're just dealing with IDE interfaces, though you might still want to go with making it an external drive via USB, because it's easier. Ditto for if your dead comp's drive is SATA and the other computer only has IDE plugs, or if your dead comp's drive is IDE and the other only uses SATA (which I don't think will be common, but what if?)
(IDE is the kind of hard drive cable interface that looks like a long thin thing, two rows of pins on the hard drive, and the cable between hard drive and motherboard is usually a wide (2.5"-3.5") flat "ribbon." The other type now popular is SATA, where the plug looks more like a shorter version of the USB-end of an iPod, and the cable is far narrower than the IDE one.)
But what if you don't want to open the second computer? Use your drive as an external. You'll need an IDE to USB adapter (the one linked also does SATA to USB!) and if it's a laptop hard drive, that's all you'll need. If you're wanting to connect a non-laptop hard drive (or CD/DVD drive) this way, you'll also need an AC power adapter to get it running. If you have both of those, but the hard drive you want to connect is an internal SATA drive and therefore the power adapter doesn't fit? The power cord adapter you'll need is under a dollar, shipped. (I'd really suggest getting them online; stores that stock them will charge a lot more than $8 for the whole kit!) Once you have the needed cables, It's pretty obvious as to what hooks up where, and then you can use your drive as an external. Let it rest on a flat surface while you do this, and try not to take forever -- if the drive is physically failing, the heat generated by it being on and running won't help anything!
Another neat thing about having that set of cables and being able to hook up any internal drive as an external USB one, is that... well, you can hook up any internal drive as an external USB one. If you're using a laptop but want an extra hard drive to back stuff up to, or to hook up a DVD burner because yours doesn't have one already, then your problem is pretty much already solved. Internal drives seem to be cheaper to come by than ones that're already external, in my experience.
About that boot CD, now. The one I like so much is a Bart PE boot disc. Bart PE Builder is a program that runs on your (working) computer, to create an ISO file which you can burn to a CD, thus making the boot disc itself. It's available right here, though it says it's meant to run on Windows 2000/XP/2003, but not on Windows NT4/ME/9x. It doesn't mention Vista or Windows 7, either way. Don't worry, though! I uploaded it to Rapidshare. IIRC, this version of it is without extra plugins and programs, such as FireFox or Spybot Search & Destroy, or even HiJackThis, but it's still all you'll need to be able to access your drive, to copy files. It'll recognize, and let you read and write to, NTFS-formatted drives, which is one of the major drawbacks of using a live Linux disc for this. Linux doesn't use NTFS natively; it's one of Microsoft's rather proprietary things.
Stick the disc in the drive and boot it up off the CD. Your computer should do this automatically. If it ignores the disc completely, you might have to change the order in which the BIOS checks for boot devices.
In Bart PE, Just open up the A43 File Utility, copy your files wherever you need to copy them to, like a secondary internal drive, or USB drive.
And now that I'm on the subject of the boot CD, here's how to do that last thing, reinstalling Windows without reformatting. You can either do this off the boot CD like I do, or connect your drive to another computer, either way. Make sure you have enough free space on your hard drive for this, firstly -- you'll want at least 1 GB. Preferably 2. In Bart PE, open up your main hard drive, and take note of the folders and files on there. You'll probably see files like boot.ini, NTLDR, config.sys and io.sys, and folders like "Windows" and "Program Files" and "Documents and Settings" and... other stuff. If you're getting rid of your old Windows installation to reinstall, you'll want to delete hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, since these two generally take up a whole lot of space. And while they may be critical to Windows functioning, they're critical to your old install of Windows, which you're going to cleanly replace. So trash 'em.
(Hiberfil.sys is what Windows dumps its memory contents to, when you put it into hibernation mode, so it'll be as big as your computer's RAM (memory.) In my case, this means it's a 2 GB file; others may have a bigger or smaller one. Pagefile.sys is the paging file, aka swap file, aka virtual memory. It's what Windows writes to if it runs out of RAM to write to. This usually happens when you're running a whole lot at once on your computer, or have Photoshop open with a 10,000-layer picture that takes up 100 MB on the hard drive when you save it, or Firefox is open with two hundred various tabs, or something else ridiculous like that.)
Then make a new folder. Call it whatever you like (generally, I just label mine as "old system") and then MOVE EVERYTHING off the root of the hard drive and into that folder. The Windows directory, the Program Files, the Documents and Settings... all of it. Leave none of the loose little files like NTLDR or boot.ini, especially.
Now with your hard drive cleared of your old Windows install, you can boot it up off your Windows install disc, and it'll say hey, you don't have Windows installed yet. Install to your hard drive? And you tell it yes, that's what you want. Just be very careful to make sure that Windows Setup knows to not reformat your drive. It's set to do that by default, unless you tell it otherwise. With Windows installed, you can then go into that "old system" folder, and sort through it at your leisure, pulling out your files and trashing what you no longer want.
"But I don't have a Windows install disc. My computer came with it already installed!" Not always a problem.
Unless your drive's contents were FUBAR'd, you should probably be able to find a directory on your drive named "i386" which might be hiding inside the Windows directory, or on the "recovery" partition, if it's still there. Not all installs of Windows have it. If you do have it, keep it safe: it is your Windows install folder! Just look for the "winnt32.exe" file in it, and run that from within Bart PE, and supply the key it asks for (you kept your Windows CD key, right? No? Ack... then get your hands on a tutorial on how to find your Windows CD key, which is easier to follow if you do it before you have these problems. In fact, you can skip a lot of steps if you do it in advance!
And if you have neither a Windows install CD or the i368 directory... well, I'm not too sure what to tell you. I certainly won't tell you to go to BitTorrent or anything. That would be wrong. ♥
If you bought your computer with Windows already installed, from a store like BestBuy, and it's a Compaq or Dell or Gateway or... whatever name brand, then you were probably also able to make a set of backup CDs or DVDs by going into the Start Menu and... I don't remember offhand. It's easy enough to Google up how to do that, but I've never done it myself. (I've only ever bought one computer from the store like that, and completely erased its hard drive when I first set it up, to install a different OS. I didn't want XP Home.) If you use those discs, though, be warned that it probably won't let you skip the step of wiping your hard drive. And you'll probably end up with that load of 30-day trial bloatware that you don't want, and the name-brand update downloaders that do little-to-no good and display ads and junk, that slow down the system a lot.
Any questions? Just ask. I realize that I wasn't too clear on a lot of things, and can improve this writeup greatly, but my brain's a little dead at the moment.
Your computer is telling you, quite simply, that Windows just shat itself.
So, let's say that it will loom in your future, because you really don't know otherwise, do you? You'll have two options, maybe three. One, you could take it to the computer repair place. Spend over a hundred bucks to save your data -- your bookmarks, art, writing, school assignments, MP3s, whatever you might've had on there. There's no guarantee you'll get to keep all of it; unless they do a 1:1 hard drive to disc image, they might miss something somewhere. Or they'll let you sit down and pick out what files and folders you want to keep. Do you really want anyone but yourself seeing what's on your computer? And it's expensive, and you'll have to wait until Tuesday to pick it up again, likely.
Two, you could have a friend who's into comps basically do the same thing as the repair shop will, but maybe for free. But you're still at their mercy. Maybe they don't have time just then? Or maybe you just don't want to impose? Can't say I blame you. Besides, there's still the privacy issue.
Third, and by far my favorite: Fix it yourself. It isn't as hard as you think. It really isn't. The computer repair shops charge people a lot of money to do this... because they can, as far as I can tell.
Obviously, I'm going to try explaining the third option there. :)
So, assuming that your Windows isn't failing due to the hard drive itself dying (in which case, you'll need another hard drive to transfer your stuff to) you'll want to start with simply backing stuff up. In fact, if the drive itself is dying, you'll still want to back stuff up.
Two ways of going about this: One, you can copy it all to another hard drive, or two, boot it up off a cd and push everything aside and sort it out later, keeping it on the same hard drive. Essentially, reinstall Windows without reformatting.
There's a few ways of going about that first option, too. You can take out the problem hard drive and stick it into another computer as a secondary drive, and read it like that. You can take it out of the computer and plug it up to another computer as an external USB drive (meaning, you don't need to open up your second computer; useful if you're doing this on two laptops, or borrowing someone else's computer to do the copying since yours is dead!) You can even boot your computer up off a CD and copy the files to an external USB drive that way. Or if you've got a desktop with more than one physical hard drive, you can boot it up off the disc and copy it to that other hard drive then.
Anything having to do with that boot CD, I'll get to in a minute.
Let's assume you only have the defunct computer, and are going to take the hard drive out of yours and read it on a computer you're willing to open up and stick your drive in. The only issue I would warn about is if you're trying to put a laptop hard drive into a desktop PC. But that's doable, actually. There are adapters for that, if you're just dealing with IDE interfaces, though you might still want to go with making it an external drive via USB, because it's easier. Ditto for if your dead comp's drive is SATA and the other computer only has IDE plugs, or if your dead comp's drive is IDE and the other only uses SATA (which I don't think will be common, but what if?)
(IDE is the kind of hard drive cable interface that looks like a long thin thing, two rows of pins on the hard drive, and the cable between hard drive and motherboard is usually a wide (2.5"-3.5") flat "ribbon." The other type now popular is SATA, where the plug looks more like a shorter version of the USB-end of an iPod, and the cable is far narrower than the IDE one.)
But what if you don't want to open the second computer? Use your drive as an external. You'll need an IDE to USB adapter (the one linked also does SATA to USB!) and if it's a laptop hard drive, that's all you'll need. If you're wanting to connect a non-laptop hard drive (or CD/DVD drive) this way, you'll also need an AC power adapter to get it running. If you have both of those, but the hard drive you want to connect is an internal SATA drive and therefore the power adapter doesn't fit? The power cord adapter you'll need is under a dollar, shipped. (I'd really suggest getting them online; stores that stock them will charge a lot more than $8 for the whole kit!) Once you have the needed cables, It's pretty obvious as to what hooks up where, and then you can use your drive as an external. Let it rest on a flat surface while you do this, and try not to take forever -- if the drive is physically failing, the heat generated by it being on and running won't help anything!
Another neat thing about having that set of cables and being able to hook up any internal drive as an external USB one, is that... well, you can hook up any internal drive as an external USB one. If you're using a laptop but want an extra hard drive to back stuff up to, or to hook up a DVD burner because yours doesn't have one already, then your problem is pretty much already solved. Internal drives seem to be cheaper to come by than ones that're already external, in my experience.
About that boot CD, now. The one I like so much is a Bart PE boot disc. Bart PE Builder is a program that runs on your (working) computer, to create an ISO file which you can burn to a CD, thus making the boot disc itself. It's available right here, though it says it's meant to run on Windows 2000/XP/2003, but not on Windows NT4/ME/9x. It doesn't mention Vista or Windows 7, either way. Don't worry, though! I uploaded it to Rapidshare. IIRC, this version of it is without extra plugins and programs, such as FireFox or Spybot Search & Destroy, or even HiJackThis, but it's still all you'll need to be able to access your drive, to copy files. It'll recognize, and let you read and write to, NTFS-formatted drives, which is one of the major drawbacks of using a live Linux disc for this. Linux doesn't use NTFS natively; it's one of Microsoft's rather proprietary things.
Stick the disc in the drive and boot it up off the CD. Your computer should do this automatically. If it ignores the disc completely, you might have to change the order in which the BIOS checks for boot devices.
In Bart PE, Just open up the A43 File Utility, copy your files wherever you need to copy them to, like a secondary internal drive, or USB drive.
And now that I'm on the subject of the boot CD, here's how to do that last thing, reinstalling Windows without reformatting. You can either do this off the boot CD like I do, or connect your drive to another computer, either way. Make sure you have enough free space on your hard drive for this, firstly -- you'll want at least 1 GB. Preferably 2. In Bart PE, open up your main hard drive, and take note of the folders and files on there. You'll probably see files like boot.ini, NTLDR, config.sys and io.sys, and folders like "Windows" and "Program Files" and "Documents and Settings" and... other stuff. If you're getting rid of your old Windows installation to reinstall, you'll want to delete hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys, since these two generally take up a whole lot of space. And while they may be critical to Windows functioning, they're critical to your old install of Windows, which you're going to cleanly replace. So trash 'em.
(Hiberfil.sys is what Windows dumps its memory contents to, when you put it into hibernation mode, so it'll be as big as your computer's RAM (memory.) In my case, this means it's a 2 GB file; others may have a bigger or smaller one. Pagefile.sys is the paging file, aka swap file, aka virtual memory. It's what Windows writes to if it runs out of RAM to write to. This usually happens when you're running a whole lot at once on your computer, or have Photoshop open with a 10,000-layer picture that takes up 100 MB on the hard drive when you save it, or Firefox is open with two hundred various tabs, or something else ridiculous like that.)
Then make a new folder. Call it whatever you like (generally, I just label mine as "old system") and then MOVE EVERYTHING off the root of the hard drive and into that folder. The Windows directory, the Program Files, the Documents and Settings... all of it. Leave none of the loose little files like NTLDR or boot.ini, especially.
Now with your hard drive cleared of your old Windows install, you can boot it up off your Windows install disc, and it'll say hey, you don't have Windows installed yet. Install to your hard drive? And you tell it yes, that's what you want. Just be very careful to make sure that Windows Setup knows to not reformat your drive. It's set to do that by default, unless you tell it otherwise. With Windows installed, you can then go into that "old system" folder, and sort through it at your leisure, pulling out your files and trashing what you no longer want.
"But I don't have a Windows install disc. My computer came with it already installed!" Not always a problem.
Unless your drive's contents were FUBAR'd, you should probably be able to find a directory on your drive named "i386" which might be hiding inside the Windows directory, or on the "recovery" partition, if it's still there. Not all installs of Windows have it. If you do have it, keep it safe: it is your Windows install folder! Just look for the "winnt32.exe" file in it, and run that from within Bart PE, and supply the key it asks for (you kept your Windows CD key, right? No? Ack... then get your hands on a tutorial on how to find your Windows CD key, which is easier to follow if you do it before you have these problems. In fact, you can skip a lot of steps if you do it in advance!
And if you have neither a Windows install CD or the i368 directory... well, I'm not too sure what to tell you. I certainly won't tell you to go to BitTorrent or anything. That would be wrong. ♥
If you bought your computer with Windows already installed, from a store like BestBuy, and it's a Compaq or Dell or Gateway or... whatever name brand, then you were probably also able to make a set of backup CDs or DVDs by going into the Start Menu and... I don't remember offhand. It's easy enough to Google up how to do that, but I've never done it myself. (I've only ever bought one computer from the store like that, and completely erased its hard drive when I first set it up, to install a different OS. I didn't want XP Home.) If you use those discs, though, be warned that it probably won't let you skip the step of wiping your hard drive. And you'll probably end up with that load of 30-day trial bloatware that you don't want, and the name-brand update downloaders that do little-to-no good and display ads and junk, that slow down the system a lot.
Any questions? Just ask. I realize that I wasn't too clear on a lot of things, and can improve this writeup greatly, but my brain's a little dead at the moment.