XP won't start up

[jstmahoney]

hi, ive been trying to get one of my computers to start up, it gets to the welcome screen and loggs in slowly. It never loads all the way, the taskbar and icons dont show up. I was just going to format the hard drive and install a fresh coppy of XP but how can I get the files out of the computer without removing the hard drive and hooking it up to another computer?
thank you
justin

 

[HillJack]

Do you have access to a second computer? Can you put them both on the same network? Do you have an administrative account on the troubled pc? If so, then boot them both up, just let the troubled on sit at the login screen (don't actually log in).

From the other PC, goto Start, Run... then type \\troubledpcname\c$ where troubledpcname is the name you assigned to that PC during Windows installation, and that will connect you to it's C: drive. For D drive, use d$, etc... Then you can grab all the files off that system.

 

[jstmahoney]

thank you, yes i have a network and will try that