Hey, I know my computer is ancient, but I need to know if there is a way to recover the data on the hard drive. The problem started when my computer warned me for months to run ChK DSk due to there being errors detected. I never let it finish because of how long it takes and because it always kept working...until it didn't. I need to know how I can recover it without the disk, or where to get a disk, or some other suggestion.
The big problem is that it won't load last good config, nor will it let me start it in safe mode. It just keeps cycling. I tried to download just the recovery console from various 3rd parties and burned to a cd, but none worked. I don't know if it was the software I got hold of or not, but I pulled the harddrive out and put into another machine with a working dvd just to be certain it wasn't that. Still nothing. I also made sure to set the boot sequence to cd first, still nothing.
MS no longer supports XP, as of April they say, so now I have no idea what to do. My data is too valuable to lose, mostly academic stuff, though. Anybody got any ideas?