I have an Acer Travelmate 2300 running Windows XP Pro. It was working fine until a tech from my broadband provider used it to check my connection. After he left, I inadvertantly left it on standby, unplugged - for 9+ hours. Now, I'm not sure if it's something he did, or my leaving it on standby for so long, but now it won't go to the desktop. Windows won't load at all! It goes to the safe mode selection screen, tries to load, then gets this blue screen with stuff on it, but the screen doesn't stay on long enough to read. Then it goes back to the safe mode selection screen.
Is there a way to fix this without having to use the Recovery Disc? My wife has a lot of her work on here, and we really don't want to lose it. Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Sebastian

Can you actually get into Safe Mode?

Have you unplugged all peripherals and tried?

Does the Acer Recovery system have a 'partial recovery' option, do you know? You could consider that. Or does it allow you to load the Recovery Console?

I've recovered files before using both BartPE and Knoppix:

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
http://www.knoppix.org/

You'll need a working system somewhere to use BartPE (i.e. set it up), but neither is particularly easy to use unless you know what you are doing.

Another option would be to run the full recovery, then install this program:

http://www.recovermyfiles.com/

We used that a few months ago on a customer who said he wasn't warned that a full recovery would wipe his data. It got everything back.

An easier option would be to take it to a PC store and pay for them to back up data. Then you can recover it using your disks.

I always feel that unless you know EXACTLY what has happened, and have managed to fiddle with it and make it 100% right, a full recovery is the safest option when disk corruption has (possibly) occurred.

Can you actually get into Safe Mode?

No.

Have you unplugged all peripherals and tried?

Yes. It always goes back to the safe mode selection screen.

Does the Acer Recovery system have a 'partial recovery' option, do you know? You could consider that. Or does it allow you to load the Recovery Console?

Haven't tried that, but we'll look into it.

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