Need advice about old operating system installed on pc (hard drive, flash, wireless)

[ms_info]

I installed windows xp onto my HP Pavilion to replace windows ME a year ago. I know to some this computer is not worth keeping. I do have a newer and better one but if this one is not broke then why get rid of it? It still works like a charm anyway... Months later after installing windows xp I received a message saying that I had 30 days to activate the copy of windows xp that I had installed. At the time I did not have the internet and activating it over the phone was not successful.

I stopped using the computer thinking that if I did not log onto the computer that the 30 day count down would be on hold. Forgive me I did not know any better at the time. Since then my computer knowledge has improved 98%.
The place that I moved to had wireless internet. I bought a wireless internet card thinking that I could now activate windows xp. Well surprise the 30 day countdown never stopped.

After I had moved I was no longer able to access windows xp from my computer the 30 day period had expired. I had to install windows xp again this time I was able to activate it. Now I have 2 operating systems on my pc but can't access the original windows xp that was installed and would love to because it has some very valuable information on it. I have tried to log back into the original windows xp that was installed to access my information and have been very unsuccessful in doing so. My question is am I permanently locked out of windows?

Is there any way that I can sneak back in there and grab my info??? I think I tried safe mode did not work!! How about MS Dos??? anything??

[BrianH]

You should be able to boot onto the new one and browse teh first installation to get your files. Even do a search for *.doc if they are word dicuments you need or whatever.

[UseJeff]

Like Brian said, the original installation of XP doesn't store anything. It's simply the old OS, and very likely was overwritten. Unless of course it's on a separate partition, which is common for HP machines (they jip people by not giving them actual disks).

You should be able to do a search through all drives and partitions, or just simply browse around starting at the "my computer" icon.

Another couple things you could consider would be to create a shared network between your computers. Essentially it creates shared folders, so you can pass files back and forth between each other. One other idea would to be removing the old hard drive, scrap the HP, then put that drive in the new machine as a slave. This last idea is rarely a good idea, unless it's the only way to access said drive. The old drive is likely very small, and likely slower than the newer drive.

So, best thing you can do is a search like BrianH said... just do a broad search for all office type docs, and you'll get all of your word/excel stuff... then just copy paste it wherever you want.

You may want to look into buying an external USB hard drive, or a USB flash drive for backing up data as well. For a good drive it's around $100 tops. You can get around 4 gigs of memory at Best Buy on a USB flash, and up to 360 gigs on an external USB drive for around $100.

[BrianH]

If its Dual booting, and can choose from both OS, the filesf rom the original should not be lost. They should in theory still be intact.

[ms_info]

Thank you both for your information this is very good news for me. UseJeff I purchased a Usb flash earlier this year it has recently disappeared!! lol I will be purchasing another soon they are very expensive. Thanks for mentioning it. I am praying that the pc will allow dual booting and that the os's are on a separate partition (I think they are) so that I can get my info back.

Also, I will do a search through all of the drives and partitions, to see if I can get any of my files back as mentioned earlier. If this is not successful then dual booting it is. Hopefully I will find a solution soon!