Sorry if this is a nooby question. My friend, who only speaks a little english (that's why i'm here instead) needs to retrieve some data from her hard drive which is partitioned, and hopefully get her comp working again as soon as possible. Windows XP pro won't start up, saying something about failed boot from hard disk (?? sorry not 100% sure what it said), whatever mode we tried to start it in. BUT earlier on it had started but ran VERY slowly and quickly froze, forcing us to restart from the power button. Then magically it began not even starting at all.
So I figured maybe we could delete XP and install W2k on that partition. Because she doesn't have any boot disks, cds etc. (lost them all or just borrowed the cd off a friend i'm not sure), I thought this could perhaps help? But yeah my basic question is can you format a partition while keeping those valuable files in the other section, and how, without having the XP cd?
Very sorry about the state of this question, it's a bit all over the place (it's 3am here and im *censored* tired) but I'd appreciate any advice so I could help my friend. Thanks!