Flashing "-"

[shof515]

I have a computer that was running XP fine,then all of a sudden,it locked up and when i restart the computer,all i see is a flashing "-" (something like that).I tryed running system recovery and that did not work..Please tell me what is wrong

And is is possbile for me to put the xp drive as a slave on my 98se computer that i am using now so i can back up my files

 

[Nodsu]

No logos, CPU, memory or BIOS information? In that case something important has died. It may be the motherboard, the CPU or the video card.

If you see the POST messages and the cursor appears when Windows is supposed to appear then you have a disk problem.

 

[shof515]

My computer can power on good(it can go into the BIOS information and because its an hp computer,all i get the HP logo instead of post messages
CPU is a:
2.8mhz celeron
512mb ram
120gb Seagate HDD
HP Pavilion a410n

 

[IronDuke]

...

And is is possbile for me to put the xp drive as a slave on my 98se computer that i am using now so i can back up my files

Should work fine. Better to back-up before a problem. Had the disc died it would be very expensive sucking the data off.

 

[shof515]

Im going to buy a 200gb tommorow and once i get that drive installed with xp,then i am going to put this drive as slave and see i if i can recover my files

 

[Fred]

And is is possbile for me to put the xp drive as a slave on my 98se computer that i am using now so i can back up my files

Was the XP drive NTFS? If so, your win98 computer might not be able to get to those files because it can't read NTFS.