computer disaster, any comfort? [View all]
One morning last week, I put my computer in sleep mode and went to work. That evening, I came home and woke it up--or tried to. It came back with a message to the effect of "fatal error--registry data file missing or corrupted." It offered a couple options, like restarting in safe mode--none I tried worked. The one I didn't try was to try to repair it from a Windows disk, which I don't have. I bought the machine used, with Windows 7 already loaded, no disk came with it. So the machine is functionally dead right now.
What I would like to know is, is there any hope of rescuing the data on the hard drive? Like maybe install the drive as a second drive on another machine (or this one, with a new drive as the first drive)? Does anybody here have any experience with this?
Note: I'm having to do this post from a library computer, since I have no internet access at home. I can't get to the library frequently, so it may be a few days before I can respond to any of your replies. Would appreciate any guidance you folks might have!
Thanks!