me won't boot to safe mode

[robby]

My friend is bringing her comp over for me to look at. She is running windows ME and said that this morning when she tried to boot up she got the windows did not start normally, choose 1, safe mode, bla bla bla screen. None of the options will load, she just keeps getting returned to that screen. There is alot of school work on this computer that she needs. She doesen't have her ME disc anymore, but has a copy of xp pro she would like to install. Can this be done without a format or her losing her word docs?

[profdlp]

The safest thing would be to get an adapter to allow a laptop drive to be hooked to a standard IDE cable and plug it in as a second drive on a working computer. Then just copy all the data you need to save to the other computer. The adapters can be had for peanuts.

I know nothing about this company, but this is an example (http://www.buyextras.com/co2lahadrtor.html) of what I'm talking about.

If the copy of XP Pro is an upgrade version (i.e. not the full version) that would probably work. The hitch is, if it doesn't you will undoubtedly be making the problem much worse.

I can't remember off the top of my head if ME has this, but in Win98 there was a boot option for step-by-step confirmation. If the same thing exists in ME you might try that. Just make sure you say "No" to anything not absolutely essential. Steer clear of extraneous drivers and all programs that run at boot, like AIM, etc.

Good luck. :)

[robby]

Haven't tried with a lappy, but the drive is currently running as a slave in my comp. Also tried the step by step. Strange thing is, I can see the drive, and it sez over a gig is being used, but this all that is visible, is five folders and three files. Restore, data, recycled, cpqdrv, and cpqs are the folders, a config dos batch file, some .sku file and a text doc called cto. However, when I ran avg, it scanned many more files and we even saw it scan some of her school work. Somehow I can't browse them , though :scratch:

[profdlp]

Try the program listed here (http://www.short-media.com/forum/showpost.php?p=123027&postcount=10) and see if it can rebuild your partition. It runs off a floppy (or bootable CD).

To avoid accidentally borking a good drive, I would run it with only the goofed-up drive in the machine.

I first found this for another member last April. A few months later it saved me, too. Since then I've been recommending it widely with no complaints. :)

[profdlp]

Haven't tried with a lappy...
:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

I was helping someone else with a laptop drive problem and got your friends computer confused with that one... :rolleyes: :D

[robby]

Well, unfortunately nothing worked, but thanks for the help. She took it to Best Buy today, they're apparently going to get the valuable files off and return it to her. At least then she can go to xp and not have to use ME anymore. I just don't understand why AVG saw files that weren't accesible through any other means.

[profdlp]

Sorry to hear that. Hopefully BB will be able to get all her stuff back. :)