Yesterday while on my computer, the computer said I was running very low on room on my C drive. So I went in and moved some of my pictures (My pictures folder) and computer games to the D drive. (C drive has 14.9 GB and it had 70 MB free space. D drive has 59.5 GB and 59 GB free.) so I moved the files and gave myself 489 MB on C drive. Moments later, I wanted to upload pictures from my camera to my computer. Normally, when I connect the camera to the computer using the USB cable, it detects the camera immediately and gets the pictures. But it wasn't doing that, so I turned the camera on and off. Still nothing. I next figured that I would restart my computer and then try again. Went to start shut down restart and got no response. After a minute I did it again, and still no response, as if I didn't choose the option at all. I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL and got nothing too. My mouse was still working and the computer was still functional but it just wasn't letting me shut down. So I manually shut it down by pressing and holding the power button. Then I restarted. Got my windows XP start up screen and then just before it loads into windows itself the screen goes black (as if windows is ready to load) but I see nothing...the hard drive light is on and it sticks like this for about a minute...then it restarts itself. If I press F8 to start in safe mode, or last known good config, it shows me the screeen where it loads up all these files, and then gets to the black screen again....I don't even see a cursor or the mouse arrow. Then it restarts again. Please help. I am not "that" knowledgable about computers so if you can explain to me in laymans terms what I need to do I would be grateful. I can't lose my files on the computer as it has very important college classwork and family pictures.

I don't have a windows recovery CD, I can't get into safe mode to do a system restore, I didn't install any new hardware device on there...(the camera has been on the computer for two weeks now and working fine) I didn't delete any important files (that I know of).

Please please help.

Cpmputer is a SONY VAIO running Windows XP home edition.

Now I tried to restart and let it load up. After a while of trying and restarting on its own, it gives me this error message:

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

This comes up after it has checked the drives. Now what?

What is the exact VAIO model?

http://esupport.sony.com/

Sony should have info on restoring your system. If they did not provide you with a Recovery Disk than their options should be on the hard drive.

You might have moved more than you thought or perhaps this issue is just a coincidence. Here is a link as to the proper procedure to move shell folders:

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_shell_folders.htm

If you continue to get a Disk Boot Failure you will need to use the VIAO instructions to run a non-destructive recovery. This should preserve your data.

In a worse case scenario you can remove the hard drive & extract the data on a desktop using an adapter such as this:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-1035_11-5160538.html#