Need help with a very old computer

S

Starguard

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 28, 2003
Messages
332
I have an old Compaq Presario 5000 that I only keep because all of my "liberated" music from the old Napster site is saved on it. Yesterday I tried burning a CD using NERO software, and the blasted thing told me that the NERO program could not read any of the music files. My first thought was WTF? This thing is not connected to the internet in anyway, so I'm sure there shouldn't be a virus thats causing this. This is the first time this has ever happened.

So... I grab a shovel and start digging through all of my old junk and managed to find the origional installation CD for NERO. When I tried reinstalling it, the computer told me that I had to re-boot the system for it to work. I did so, and now my windows screen won't display anymore. All I get is an "ACTIVE DESKTOP RECOVERY" SCREEN" with a button for me to push that should take me back to my origional settings. When I try to click on it, nothing happens. After re-booting like 1000 times, I managed to get my MS/DOS screen up.

From there I ran a complete scanreg/disk command and scanned the entire hard drive for errors. Rebooted again, and this managed to set things back to my origional background setting, but when I tried clicking on the "My computer" icon, it opened up, but nothing was visible. The bottom of the screen says it seen 6 files in there (which is what it should read) but the screen doesn't show them. After rebooting once again, I'm back at the ACTIVE DESKTOP RECOVERY SCREEN" again.


I have an external hard drive that I want to save all of my music to, but I first have to get into the internal hard drive to transfer all of them. How can I save my music without being forced to re-format the entire hard drive and lose everything.

Also, I can't seem to remember how to boot this thing up in "safe mode"


NEED HELP

S.O.S......S.O.S......S.O.S......S.O.S......S.O.S. ....S.O.S.....:eek:
 
Is this windows 98 or 2000 or XP? Try pressing "F5" just as the windows loading screen shows up, or holding "control" as that screen shows up. Then if a menu pops up, select safe mode from it. See this for more details.

Also, if you restart the machine in the middle of that loading screen, Windows should recognize that it failed to start and ask you the next time around if you want to try safe mode. This is probably not a great idea if you're already worried about disk corruption, but it might work if you can't get the keystroke thing to.
 
Its running Windows ME

Sorry I didn't mention that earlier

O.K. I can get in using the safe mode.When I click on the "My Controls" icon I can see all of the files inside. Outside if safe mode it still behaves the same.
 
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