What operating system?

Sounds like you are running XP or W2000. If it is a standard install you will probably need to reinstall the operating system to recover from this. If the "load previous successful" failed then you have very little option I'm afriad.

Was the laptop bought with a full version of operating system or just a "recovery CD" ?(PCWorld etc often do this!). If you have a real CD then you can do a full install and save all your files. If it is just a recovery disk it will put the laptop back to the original state before you added your files i.e. you lose everything!!!

In this situation I normally try and recover the required files off the drive before attempting to reinstall (just in case). Every time I have done this providing you install to the same windows folder you had before ( e.g. c:windows or c:winnt ) all your original data is preserved on the disk.

One issue may be the format of the drive. If you are lucky it has been formatted to Win32 in which case your files will be visible if you can boot off a floppy/CDrom or USB key fob. If you are unlucky it will be NTFS. This can only be read inside a working NT/W2000/XP machine.

Backing up is therefore going to be your problem. With a standard PC what I would do is pop out the hard drive, load it into a working PC and copy the contents. Obviously you cannot do this.

Possible workarounds are:
1. Buy a USB key with a fairly high capacity 128MBytes etc and get a mate to put a boot image on it. This link is good for that User Posted Link

2. Go on Ebay and get a cheap 2.5in external hard drive enclosure link these Viao ones User Posted Link
Pop the hard drive out of the laptop into this then connect Via usb to a mates machine. The drive will appear as a new drive letter on his machine. Backup from there.

Posted By: Basingstoke_Canary, Sep 19, 13:23:02