HP Pavilion xt595

[KGrace]

My friend has a HP Pavilion xt595 notebook computer. This is the problem...it keeps crashing. It is only 6 months old and they have agreed to replace it. The problem is that she has some VERY IMPORTANT emails on there that are vital to her business. When the computer comes on, it goes to the HP screen and says, "Press ESC to change boot order, F2 to go to setup, F12 to boot from LAN." Well, if you hit F2, it says, "Entering setup..." and then it just sits there. Nothing. You can here the harddrive because it sounds like a sick cow mooing. I know that sounds strange, but it does. The question I need answered is...is there ANY way to get these emails off of this computer before HP replaces it? As I said, they are vital to her business. I was going to try flashing her BIOS...anything...just to get XP to come up, but no dice. It won't boot from the floppy. If anyone can offer any suggestions, I would SO appreciate it.

Thanks,
K.Grace

[Steven.Bentley]

It really depends on what the problem is, whether it's that the hard drive has died or if maybe just the OS has gone pear shaped.

If it's XP it's likely that the drive is formatted to NTFS so a standard bootdisk won't let you access the files. What you might like to try is a system called Knoppix, which is a linux system that runs from a live bootable CD, but it's a massive download. Using that you can boot the PC and hopefully access the drive, and if you're lucky you can persuade it to connect to the internet so you can forward the emails elsewhere.

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix-mirrors/index-en.html

(just make sure you get the English one - I downloaded the German one at first )

[KGrace]

Thanks Steven.Bentley. I ended up calling a computer shop who agreed to back up the harddrive for her. It only cost her $50.00, so she was happy. Thanks!

K.Grace