Hi everyone. Right...

I have a PC with a SATA cable running XP. I have a friend(?) who dropped a large and heavy book on his laptop and killed it stone dead. However, he wants me to get the info back off his HDD. I have removed the HDD (which is SATA and attached it to my PC). He was running Vista (of which I have virtually no experience). Starting to sound like a problem?

I discovered that all the files and folders on the HDD were hidden so I permanently unhid them. I then discovered that the bulk of the drive was contained within two files (\preload\base.wim and \sources\boot.wim) I checked into this and discovered that this is something to do with vista drive imaging. After more research, I downloaded imagex, which I gather is part of the vista system for viewing these images. And noe I can mount and view the wim files that look to me a lot like recovery files.

Does anyone know how I can manage to mount a vista-based laptop SATA HDD (was a HP Presario C700) on my SATA cable in XP and find the user's documents and save them for him? I'm damned if I can find them and it's been days now.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Si

victrix,
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http://www.windowsnetworking.c.....Part2.html
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If you don't understand this article, please don't feel alone.
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I've been trying to understand this Process for 6 months. :) :)
Tis a bit different than XP.
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Regards,
Rick P.

Heck, Rick. I was so busy replying you beat me with the post! Will also have a look at this tonight. If I get any more frustrated though, I shall be looking at it through a large scotch, and we all know where that leads (kapow... take that rebel scum!)

I'm having one of those weeks where, because I work in IT, every man and his dog is asking me to solve computer problems for them. I've this to deal with, then a Sony Vaio to reinstall from scratch, then one that has no sound to look at, and now I've just got a text to ask me to go look at someone's desktop. I should start charging for this!

Still, it's all something I can put on my blog! (if you're bored)

Si (reaching for the whisky bottle)

Edit by mod. No self promotion allowed.

victrix,
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(LOL) I know how to make Deployments of XP BUT am afraid shall never understand how to make Vista or Win 7 Deployments even if I had the books with the "Big Print".
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Will leave that for you "younger folks" and slip quietly into obscurity.... (LOL) (LOL)
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Regards,
Rick P.

victrix, hello. If I understand correctly, you are running XP on your system with your friend's Vista hard drive attached. When you boot into XP, you should be able to use Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to view the partitions that are on your friend's drive. XP can read NTFS partitions written by Vista, so that should not be a problem. Perhaps the partition with the data has not been assigned a drive letter which you can do in Disk Management.

If you are having trouble interpreting the output of Disk Management, post a screen shot of it and we will take a look.