[RESOLVED] [ME] Reformat!

[Paul M]

Now its time for a reformat luckily i had a lot of the stuff my parents need backed up. But there are a couple of other things which are bigger than the allowed 1.44MB file size on floppy disks. Now you are wondering why am i using floppy disks? Well thats why i am here, because in Safe Mode it appears that the USB is not being accepted or anything it doesn't even acknowlegde it. It flashes itself but no message box from tray appears or icon in My Computer.

I was wondering if anyone had any information on how to be able to use a USB or external hard drive during Safe Mode to back up some stuff before i reformat. Oh and Normal mode doesn't work instant BSOD

Need responses immediately! Sorry

[Greyskull]

How bout disk drives? If not, try accessing the cmd prompt and type the following:

"win /d:m" (without quotation marks)

Although i'm not 100% certain if this will apply to XP as well, I've only tried this @ Win98.

[Paul M]

What does that do exactly?

The other things are i don't have a burner or anything.

[Paul M]

Never done all this stuff but is it possible to remove the HD and put it in my computer (this one) running XP? and then move all the stuff from the HD that i need to this one?

[Greyskull]

Never done all this stuff but is it possible to remove the HD and put it in my computer (this one) running XP? and then move all the stuff from the HD that i need to this one?

Yeah you can do that. Set it up as your second hd and you shud be able to extract the data you want.

As for your earlier questoin, the cmd prompt i gave was for you to be able to access your cd-burner but if you havent got one then connecting the hard drive to your other one to back-up data might seem like a more suitable solution.

what exactly happend why can't you log-in normally from your (parents) pc?

[Edit] If you can access it on safe mode, it means that one of the windows system file is corrupted. So there could be easier solution

[Paul M]

Its okay i need to reformat anyway haven't done so in like 5 years and its like a 10 year old PC even more maybe 12 or so.

The only worry i have is backing up some last minute stuff. More photos than anything. So just uninstalling the HD and installing it on my XP desktop should be perfectly fine? Thanks

<Edit>
Oh and i am getting BSOD (In first post) when i let it load (try to load) normally.

[Greyskull]

That should be fine. I'm guessing you know how to make a hard-drive as a slave?

[Paul M]

Not exactly installing it shouldn't be a problem but making it a slave might be a little bit of an issue. Could you explain the process a little please? Even briefly will be enough, link would do fine too

[Greyskull]

Here try this,

http://www.cyberwalker.net/article/85

Jumpers on hard drives, for the uninitiated, are usually tiny little sliders (often black) that slip over two wire prongy things to connect them. They can usually be found on the back or side of a hard drive casing.

Depending on which prongy pair you slide a jumper over often determines how a piece of hardware is configured. When you install two drives, you have to set one as a master drive and the other as a slave. The computer looks for the operating system on the master drive and uses the slave as a secondary drive that behaves as storage.

[Greyskull]

http://www.dansdata.com/sbs27.htm

This one is more clearer..

[Greyskull]

I found this link that allows you to connect a USB drives whilst in SAFE mode. However, I haven't tried this yet whether it actually works....

http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm

[Paul M]

Thanks a lot! But it looks like i am just going to copy over the last couple of files onto some floppy disks and then reformat. Its an old HD anyway might have some issues and i think the motherboard here only has two IDE sockets (*note* haven't bothered to check ) anyway thanks again but i am going to be buying a new computer soon anyway to replace the old ME system

[Greyskull]

you only need connection to your mobo 2 be honest. Usually an IDE cable has 2 connectors for your hd one for the primary and one for secondary so that shud wrk fine...

Before giving up, try the last link. Might wrk

Regards,

[Lord Orwell]

YOu don't need to actually remove anything from the computer. All you need to do is copy the documents and desktop folder somewhere else, then reinstall windows to the same directory as a "new" install (not upgrade). It will automatically erase the current files in those directories. When done you will have a fresh install but all their files will still be there. However note that while i think this bug may have been fixed in ME, it might not have been: 9x had a problem with the install program that came on the cds. If certain system files were already in existence when it tried to install, it crashed. If you have this issue, you will have to erase the windows directory before installation.