My Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop (running Windows XP Professional) stopped working at the turn of the New Year – and I need some way to at least access what’s in it (had much backed up – but not everything).
When it crashed, I got an error message “Savedump.exe – Corrupt File. The file or directory C:\WINDOWS is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdisk utility.” And a bit after that – went to a blue screen, saying: “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down… A process or crucial thread to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. … Beginning dump of physical memory.”
After that, was never able to get the computer going for more than a very few minutes before it crashed in that same way again. Someone at the Dell ‘out-of-warrantee’ tech support dept. suggested that it was probably a motherboard problem, but suggested that I could get full access to the crashed computer’s hard-drive if I installed it in a 2 ½ inch external enclosure, which I could then connect to my other computer (actually, my wife’s). So at CompUSA I bought a 2.5” USB 2.0 Aluminum External Enclosure and installed the old computer’s HD in it. Now on Windows Explorer it does indeed show another drive – "Removable Disk G:" – but when I try to see what’s on that drive I get “Insert Disk (please insert a disk into drive G”.
Now – it seems as the HD from my computer has been activated, because (1) the light is on, and (2) the case is warm, and I can feel a little vibration. Yet – can’t access it. What can I do now?
When it crashed, I got an error message “Savedump.exe – Corrupt File. The file or directory C:\WINDOWS is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdisk utility.” And a bit after that – went to a blue screen, saying: “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down… A process or crucial thread to system operation has unexpectedly exited or been terminated. … Beginning dump of physical memory.”
After that, was never able to get the computer going for more than a very few minutes before it crashed in that same way again. Someone at the Dell ‘out-of-warrantee’ tech support dept. suggested that it was probably a motherboard problem, but suggested that I could get full access to the crashed computer’s hard-drive if I installed it in a 2 ½ inch external enclosure, which I could then connect to my other computer (actually, my wife’s). So at CompUSA I bought a 2.5” USB 2.0 Aluminum External Enclosure and installed the old computer’s HD in it. Now on Windows Explorer it does indeed show another drive – "Removable Disk G:" – but when I try to see what’s on that drive I get “Insert Disk (please insert a disk into drive G”.
Now – it seems as the HD from my computer has been activated, because (1) the light is on, and (2) the case is warm, and I can feel a little vibration. Yet – can’t access it. What can I do now?
