Ok, details are:
Op system Windows Me, computer bought around 2000-2001. Has run perfectly well until last week. System is NOT online and has not been since 2005. Took a couple of freebie game programs via zip-drive and installed and played. On exit from one game (or game exitted, hard to tell) the display went to basic 16 colors. Tried reboot and system says invalid device, and display still shot. Swapped in other monitor, and finally got display, but still 16 colors and no options to change. In the meanwhile, zip-drive no longer shows, as does the CD drive, and Control Panel does not give anything, not even the base window display. Reboot in safe mode still leaves system in total 'basic' mode. Dos based game programs such as Freecell, Solitaire, etc still run fine as does Notepad. Installed Microsoft Office programs fail on startup, but I'm guessing it's because fo the display issues. Can copy to old floppy drive, but at 1.4 meg a go, it's really hard to copy files, as you can imagine.
So, question is, can I take out the hard drive and install it in another machine where the zipdrive works, to secure personal data, or (I'm not too hopeful here) can I rebuild the system without losing personal data files? I can't run the restore CD that came with the system as the CDROM drive is 'inaccessible'. Could I install a new motherboard and expect to reload without losing data?
Many thanks in advance for any tips, suggestions, sympathy, old-fogey jokes, hey whatever you've got, I'll read...
BTW, I've been working with computers for over 30 years and PCs since MS-DOS in '81 so I'm not 'computer-ignorant'. I'm techie-minded, just not totally au-fait with rebuilding at this level...
Thanks
The Viking
