xp pro crashed with some data I'd like to recover if I can't boot into it

#1 rshift

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Posted 19 June 2005 - 05:23 AM

#2 BabyBoy--

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Posted 19 June 2005 - 07:51 AM

it surprises me that you were able to do all this and have 2 hard disks and not know that you can very well make your other hard drive primary install xp on it and then get the data on the "crashed" drive. nevertheless i dont know what you mean by crashed so this is assuming it is still in working condition but the boot info/windows install is just messed up.

#3 rshift

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Posted 19 June 2005 - 03:06 PM

Thank you for your reply. I'm sorry for my vague language in trying to describe my problem and my attempt to find a solution for it, but I'm new to computers and I don't have a technical background in working with them. They are a means to an end for me, extremely useful for the things I have to do.
However, using Partition Magic's "Rescue Me", when I looked at the hd with the xp OS that hangs at "restart" the RM program says that the partition was "improperly dismounted."
Is there a fix for repairing an improperly dismounted hd? I was only trying to repair the xp install when this happened. If I could figure out how to boot into the xp that I was trying to repair, I'd prefer to do that. If not, I was unaware (until you pointed out) that I can hook up both hds (one hd an earlier clone backup of the current hd that won't boot) simultaneously and select the functional clone as the primary hd in order to access and copy the data off of the xp OS that currently hangs.
I haven't done this before. Would I have to use the command prompt interface for this? Or will the functional xp OS Windows interface appear?
Thank you.