Other responders suggest placing her HD in another computer as a slave 
and copying off whatever is needed first.  I also think that is the best 
way to go.  You should also check to make sure installation disks and 
registration codes are available to reinstall all her software, 
including windowsXP.  Many systems today come without the cd's and they 
expect you to create your own set of recovery disks.
Paul Hachmeyer

Dale Mentzer wrote:

>Hello listers,
>
>A friend at church brought her PC to me (eMachine) and said that they experienced a close lightning strike and that afterwards the PC would not boot. It appears that the HD has been scrambled in some way (I get a read error message upon boot). The HD seems physically undamaged as I ran Spinrite on it and encountered no problems. The BIOS recognizes the drive OK and it is partitioned (NTFS), but Windows XP installer says it is unformatted and wants to format it to install XP. I'd like to recover some data (pictures, etc.) on the HD for her as well as get Windows working again. Can somebody suggest how I might be able to recover the files so I can then do a clean XP install? Thanks for any help in advance.
>
>Regards,
>Dale Mentzer
>
>  
>

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