My laptop (HP Pavillion with P4, about 2 yrs old) seemed to be stuck in some kind of loop. Upon boot up the Win XP splash screen appeared and then the screen would display the choices for running in Safe Mode. I tried all choices and ever time I would end up back at the same screen to choose a safe mode. I removed the laptop hard drive and using a spare IDE cabe that I know is in good condition, and an IDE to laptop interface adapter, I connected the laptop HDD to the secondary IDE slot on my PC. (After disconnecting the cable from the motherboard to the CD ROM). My desk top would not even boot...just a black screen after the WinXP splash screen appeared! I'm pretty confidant that the laptop HDD, the adapter, and the IDE cable were all connected properly. (Pin 1 was marked on the HDD, and on the adapter and I plugged in the IDE cable with the red strip on the side of pin 1, then connected the IDE cable to my PC exactly as the origional.

The data on the HDD is very important. Do you think I have a chance of recovery? Myself or with a data recovery service?

Thanks,

My laptop (HP Pavillion with P4, about 2 yrs old) seemed to be stuck in some kind of loop. Upon boot up the Win XP splash screen appeared and then the screen would display the choices for running in Safe Mode. I tried all choices and ever time I would end up back at the same screen to choose a safe mode. I removed the laptop hard drive and using a spare IDE cabe that I know is in good condition, and an IDE to laptop interface adapter, I connected the laptop HDD to the secondary IDE slot on my PC. (After disconnecting the cable from the motherboard to the CD ROM). My desk top would not even boot...just a black screen after the WinXP splash screen appeared! I'm pretty confidant that the laptop HDD, the adapter, and the IDE cable were all connected properly. (Pin 1 was marked on the HDD, and on the adapter and I plugged in the IDE cable with the red strip on the side of pin 1, then connected the IDE cable to my PC exactly as the origional.

The data on the HDD is very important. Do you think I have a chance of recovery? Myself or with a data recovery service?

Thanks,

You were booting the laptop drive as a slave (or that was your intention)?

If your BIOS is set to boot the CD ROM prior to the hard drive and you put the laptop drive there it might be trying to boot that which will not work.