You could remove the HD from her computer, set it as a "slave", and 
connect it to your computer (if the cables are long enough, you do not 
have to physically install the HD). If your computer recognizes and 
reads the HD, you can transfer the files to your computer OR using your 
computer, burn the files to a CD. After that return the HD to her 
computer, after resetting it as the "master". You can do a clean XP 
install if you first Fdisk and format the HD OR you can do an XP install 
over the top of what is on the HD. In either case, you will need to do 
at least the critical updates through MS.

I hope this helps.

Tom Mayer

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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