Anyone good with Windows?

[liv]

So my brother emailed me in a panic, his friend's computer won't boot into Windows and he's scared to reinstall Windows in case he loses all her data. I know in theory reinstalling the OS is supposed to leave files untouched, but I also know that doesn't work very well. Does anyone know the black magic to save the files from the pre-boot screen? We've got as far as the Microsoft support documentation and some basic Google searches, anyone have anything better than that?

His description of the problem:

I have an XP disc. I booted it from the disc and it let me enter a recovery console. I tried a check disc recovery thing but that didnt help. If I run the fix boot program will it wipe all of R___'s data? Can I reinstall windows without wiping the C Drive? Is it easy? Is there a way of getting the data before reinstalling windows

Any suggestions much appreciated!

ETA: further question pulled up from the comments:

One little question, how do I get to the dos prompt? When I boot from the XP disc, I can enter the recovery console, reinstall windows or exit everything it seems to me. My research suggested that the recovery console doesn't give you enough access rights (?) to copy files to an external drive.

Comments

[pseudomonas]

i thought reinstalls wiped data on windows. i'd consider taking the hard drive out and copying everything (or everything valuable) on it.

[azurelunatic]

Seconded on the hard-drive-out-and-copy idea. That's my answer to a large number of problems.

This can be done either by taking the disk and shoving it in as the secondary disk in a working system, or getting an inexpensive (but compatible) hard drive enclosure kit and making it into a temporary external hard drive.

I recommend to do some serious searching on the processes for both of these before attempting.

[liv]

According to Microsoft themselves, reinstall should keep the data but reset the settings. According to people I know who've tried it this doesn't often happen in practice. How do you copy stuff from a hard drive if it's outside the computer? (I also suspect Screwy won't have the dexterity to unscrew the computer and take parts out of it, but he may be able to get help with that.)

[pseudomonas]

you get a widget to turn a hard drive into a giant usb drive. cost about a tenner. needs someone to do fiddly bits, yes. also needs another computer.

An alternative is to put in a new hard drive and install windows on that, then shove back the original disk as a second hard drive. this relies on having a spare hard drive slot, but is good if he wants more storage anyway.