PC to PC ?

[techStyles]

greetings, one of my computers isnt working correctly. it turns on but it doesnt seem to read the monitor, or any monitor I try. I assume that is a video card issue...but my question is.....

Is there not a way for me to connect my PC to another one of my PC's even tho I cannt boot the 1st? I figure its 2007 by now there must be some sort of wire to connect 2 computers...I need to access the contents of the harddrive asap

The PC that is not opening is : Compaq Presario SR155ONX, 3400+ AMD Athlon 64 processor
and the working pc is : HP Pavillion a1600N AMD Athlon2 64.

both PC's are on windows XP

also, not sure if this is of relevance, the router I use is Linksys wirelessG broadband router model wrt546 v6

What are my options??, asside form gettin a proffesional to fix the video card?

Could I not connect the two through some sort of usb wire or firewire or ethernet cable??? or another cable I could buy? I dont want to chance removing the harddrive..

Any help is appreciated!!

 

[AlbertLionheart]

best bet is to take the hdd out of the dodgy machine and fit it to the other one as a slave (look at the drive label to see the settings or connect it to the CD cable pro tem). Copy your data across and then replace it. Swapping the hdd really is no big deal so long as you are careful and don't force cables where they should not go!
Without the monitor it is not practical to set up the dodgy pc for any sort of remote access. Once you have it working you could try the windows remote support tool as this will work across a local network on your linksys.
Hope this is helpful.

 

[DelJo63]

you can yank the critical stuff off the HD with
this https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic76094.html

 

[AlbertLionheart]

Hi jobeard: yes - great tool, but if techstyles cannot see anything on the monitor?

 

[k.jacko]

would it not be easier to try and get a cheap gfx card or borrow one just to get your old one up and running? Seems far more practical to me. Then you have 2 working pc's.
Moving the hdd from one to the other to copy data doesn't 'fix' your problem of a dodgy pc.

 

[Nodsu]

It has been possible to use Macs as external hard drives to each other for ages.. No, you cannot do it in PC world

Both of your options mean ripping open the broken computer:
A: replace the video card or insert another one (from your good computer?).
B: take out the hard drive and connect it to anoyher computer directly or inside of an enclosure

 

[techStyles]

thx for all the suggestions..Im gonna try a few things out