if you don't have anything installed that's absolutely essential and you can't afford to lose then you can do a system restore to the way dell sent the laptop to you.
I'm obsessed with system modifications and format my system about every month due to problems I cause and I can tell you there is no hope on that one unless you have a dual-boot with another NT based OS on a second partition and an xp disc (which it sounds you sure don't have that). I had the hal.dll issue and spent two days with restore discs and modified xp restore systems (funny I enjoy that stuff) and it all didn't work and I had to format.
I don't think there is hope for your data unless you have an external USB exclosure.
bacillus
2 Intern
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14.4K Posts
0
August 20th, 2006 20:00
if you don't have anything installed that's absolutely essential and you can't afford to lose then you can do a system restore to the way dell sent the laptop to you.
you will need to press ctrl+F11 at startup.
super_geek
37 Posts
0
August 25th, 2006 03:00
I don't think there is hope for your data unless you have an external USB exclosure.