Need of massive help

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Alright so yesterday i was using partition magic and just cleaning up some unneeded partitions, merging and all that good jazz. I set my sights on the HP Backup drive. Its empty, Ive previously formatted it many times, and its just sitting there not being used. So i think to myself, 'what the hell, its not being ued so ill just merge it to my primary'. Big mistake. Computer shuts down, goes to a partition magic blue screen, it does its thing, takes about a half hours, and restarts. I left it unattended during this time. When i come back, all i see is just a black screen with a cursor blinking.I think alright so sweat ill just reinstall windows (this is after i exhausted a couple other methods such as booting the second drive). I do that. It goes through the installation blue screen, and when it come to restart it does so without any hitches. It restarts to the same black screen with a blinking cursor. I think ok this has happened before just a simple error, itll fix itself once i retry the installation proces. Nope constantly it returns to the black screen, before prompting me to boot from the cd. Ive tried taking the cd out after it restarts but to no avail. At one point it lead me to an error message

"Windows Could Not Start Because of a Computer Disk Hardware Configuration Problem"

i thought great this is some headway ill just look that error up and ill be on my way. I do the recommended bootcfg /rebuild or whatever in the repair console, but again to no avail. Still just a black screen with blinking cursor.

Ive tried all i could think of ive even tried to install an early build of windows vista, and nothing has worked. I downloaded the ultimate boot disk, and ive seen that the files are still there as i can navigate to them. But windows just wont start/install. It seems like an infinite loop. I dont really want to format, but if i have to i will. Id like to get some data off that first hard drive first though and shunt it over to my backup drive. Does anyone know of a bootdisk of something that will allow me to do so? Or maybe burn them to a dvd? Anything that will allow me to back certain files up
 
Puppy linux has a winner in the latest edition 2.13. It is a small download 84mb and boots nicely. You can take the cd you booted from out of the drive and put in a blank cd and use the cd burning software in puppy to place all of the files you want on the blank. Puppy Linux fits all into memory, if you have 128mb memory or above.
http://puppylinux.org/user/downloads.php?cat_id=1
 
You can also copy your valuable files to a floppy or thumb/flash drive (if you have a usb port). It is all done thru a graphical user interface (gui).
 
I remembered after i posted this that i had an old copy of Knoppix laying around. I just copied all of m valuables over to DVDs now im formatting to see if that will fix the boot error. Its probably looking for that partition and since its not there, it refuses to boot. We shall see i still may need help hehe
 
And its done. I just formatted it all, after i backed up. Reinstalled windows, and all my programs (in record time might i add), and im back in business. I think its time to invest in something like norton ghost lol. It hung on the black screen for a little while after i reinstalled and i just about cried :p
 
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