Computer won't recognise external disk drive

[NOX]

Hi, I have an old computer which was riddled with virus' so I discarded it until I had time to do a fresh install. However before I do that I need to lift some irreplaceable photos from it's hard drive. I have an external hard drive which my computer fails to recognise and niether will it recognise memory sticks or the like, I can't upload them to the net because it crashes everytime you try to connect to the internt and it's refusing to recognise blank discs so I can't burn them onto disc, so does anyone have any ideas what I can do to try to make it recognise my external drive so I can dump them onto that please? It's running XP Professional and is in a very sick state constantly blue screening and eating data.

[TTG]

Try a system restore. You won't lose your data.

[ChuckFickens]

Rather than relying on a flaky operating system that's already had it why not remove the drive from the dead computer, install it in the external hard drive enclosure and then plug it into a good computer.

Either that or boot the computer from a CD with a version of linux on it (ubuntu would do nicely) and then copy the information from the hard drive onto the external drive without using the bad windows install.

[LeMarchand]

Is this the virus infested machine you're using? I would first try "Safe Mode" (tap F8 during boot up). If you're lucky it may run well enough to save your pictures.

If you can access another PC, you could download a boot disc (my favourite is UBCD4WIN, but it's not straightforward to build) - maybe something like Ubuntu or Knoppix. You could then then boot into the disc, bypassing Windows altogether and save your data. I usually find it's best to attach any external drives before booting to a CD/DVD.

You could also pull out your drive and attach it to another computer for recovery.

Don't forget to scan for nasties when you want to reload your pics.

[LeMarchand]

Too slow!

[NOX]

Thank you all so much, I'll be trying that later- so wait for the next help message;-)