911 help crappy computer probs!
Hello everyone, I've been reading over quite a bit of stuff on this forum and you guys really seem to know what your talking about SOOOOO you can help me....I'm having the SAME ole mountable boot volume prob I've seen some of you help others out with in the past, the only thing that makes prob a bit different is the laptop is a crappy little acer one, and I know some of you said that you have to change the drivers and have put in the XP cd to do that, well the acer doesnt take CD's so what do I do now...this is REALLY important because I have a 7 month old daughter and about 3 months of her lifes pictures are on this acer and I will be destroyed if I loose those...I will give you guys ANY info you need just please help, but I admit you'll have to kinda explain it in idiot form because I am not computer savy, we have however tried safe mode, and went to f8 and tried from last known good config but then it goes to that black screen that gives a long list of I guess stuff its doing but it gets stuck on agpCPQ.sys if that helps then goes to the blue screen about unmountable boot volume and this is a continuous cycle no matter what I push.... i can't explain how much I appreciate any of your help!!! 
Sincerely,
a mother who doesn't want to loose her daughters pics...aka Amie
Sincerely,
a mother who doesn't want to loose her daughters pics...aka Amie
0
Comments
Do you have any friends that are "in to" computers? Right now, my best advice is to find someone that knows how to take the hard drive out of that laptop and connect it to a different PC to pull your pictures off for you.
There are certain steps to recover it that, if done wrong or simply the selection of the wrong option, could totally erase the drive and prevent you from getting the pictures back.
This is contingent upon the drive itself not being physically damaged in some way (which is why you could be getting the error you get on boot). There is a chance that your pictures are already gone (depending on what is actually wrong with the drive/system).
Based on what you have posted, I feel there is a 90+% chance that your pictures are fine, but trying to get Windows to boot again, may decrease this chance.
That was why I made the suggestion of a friend. Sometimes even though you specify what you want done, some of these "computer fixers" don't really listen and will go through a standard set of procedures they use to fix things. This set of procedures will many times simply be "format and start over" if the standard recovery procedures don't work within 30min of trying. Starting over would totally remove your pictures from the unit.
Take the hard drive out and look at it. If it has a couple rows of pins on it then it's IDE, if it has only two connectors, one slightly longer than the other, then it's SATA. Purchase the corresponding external USB caddy and connect the drive to a working system. You should see the drive pop up in My Computer and you will be able to transfer files off of it provided that the disk isn't actually damaged.
Thermaltake BlacX N0028USU External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5" & 3.5" USB 2.0
Let us know if you need any more help or would like alternatives.
Just as a point of clarification you dont actually need the caddy if you have a spare set of SATA cables lying around. You can install the drive as though it were a standard internal drive.
I suspect that you didn't build your own desktop PC and therefore dont have spare cables lying around? in this case the caddy is the best option. I basically converts your SATA connectors on yor Hard Disk to USB and saves you having to open up the desktop you are trying to copy stuff too.
I have just this week been looking at a two year old (ish) Acer laptop with th same problem for a colleague at work. I did manage to get all the data (music, pics and work) of using the method mentioned above by others. Unfortunatly I was not able to restore the Windows and fix the error as none of the tools worked and the system restore package was not working either.
First step really has to be to get the data off. once you know it is safe you can do whatever you want with the machine.
Maybe power cables (assuming its not modular PSU) but not data. I dont think you can run two sata devices on the one sata "channel" like you can with ide.
soooooo, question. If I buy this do you think I could manage to do this myself? or should I still take it somewhere to have them take the hard drive out?! so then after the hard drive is out I put it into this contraption then I connect it to my desktop? Meaning I should take that with me to, too the store, if I take it to "pc land" I'm glad that thing isn't too expensive...I can't tell all of you how much I appreciate the advice and answers!!!
I should also point out that there is a small chance you may not be able to recover anything of the hard disk. If that is the case then the data is already lost and anything that you do wont make the problem any worse. On that basis you have nothing to loose by trying.
I would recomend that you try and get the data off before taking it to a repair centre as many centres will simply wipe the disk and start over without thinking about what data is on there.