WinMe fails to load Windows on HP Pavilion

I've got an HP Pavilion running WinME thats 3 years old which for some
reason decided several weeks ago to start booting correctly, with the
exception of displaying the wallpaper and the taskbar for a brief second,
and then hanging permanently. In other words, when I start the computer
everything boots correctly, and when the Login box appears, I login or click
cancel to get to the desktop. The wallpaper displays, as does the taskbar at
the bottom of the screen, but only for a split second, and then it
disappears. The computer then hangs permanently and sits staring at me in
smug defiance. Since this little situation appeared several weeks ago I've
bought a new computer, and the only reason I am spending time on this is
because I have lots of information I'd like to get off of the old hard drive
(that, and the CD burner in my new computer makes CD's which won't play in
my 4 year old Pioneer car stereo - anybody have any input on that and know a
way to work around it? (short of buying a new car stereo, thanks)) I've done
searches on Google for bootable CD images, which I've tried, and apparently
my new computer refuses to boot from the CD drive, as far as I can tell,
although I could be wrong. I'd like to find a bootable CD image which will
let me at least boot to DOS, but I haven't been able to find one so far. I'd
make a bootable floppy with my new machine, but it doesn't have a floppy
drive, and I'm not spending the $$ on a USB floppy at this point. I do have
the 3 system recovery CD's that came with the computer, but there are no
directions with them, and I can't get them to do anything, so right now they
are worthless to me.

(I realize this is long, but I'm trying to include all parts of the problem
and the things that I have tried to fix it up to this point.)

Ideally what I would like is to restore 100% functionality to the OS in my
Me machine simply so I can retrieve the data I need to and burn a bunch of
CD's with my old burner (which makes CD's my car stereo WILL play...although
I tried installing my old burner on my new machine and XP threw a fit and
disabled the drivers.) However, at this point I think restoring 100%
functionality might be a little much to hope for, though I hope someone
proves me wrong! Thanks in advance to anyone who tries to tackle this!

Computer Info:
HP Pavilion xt919
WinMe
800Mhz Celeron
Phoenix BIOS v. 4.0 release 6.0.A
128MB RAM

You could if you wish, try to troubleshoot you WinMe machine - e.g. try
booting into Safe Mode, Check for viruses, etc., etc...

Or you could try re-installing WinMe - a bit drastic, but your choice g

If you are careful, you won't lose any of your data files, but I suggest you
take a look at Noel's site first and read the following article:-
Re-installing ME
http://www.btinternet.com/~winnoel/reinME.htm

Or you could try hooking up your old (WinMe) hard drive to your XP machine
(e.g. via a USB to IDE adapter if necessary) and copying the WinMe disk to a
new folder on the XP hard drive and keep what data you want/need and dump
the rest.

Mart



"Freebird" wrote in message
.com...
I've got an HP Pavilion running WinME thats 3 years old which for some
reason decided several weeks ago to start booting correctly, with the
exception of displaying the wallpaper and the taskbar for a brief second,
and then hanging permanently. In other words, when I start the computer
everything boots correctly, and when the Login box appears, I login or
click
cancel to get to the desktop. The wallpaper displays, as does the taskbar
at
the bottom of the screen, but only for a split second, and then it
disappears. The computer then hangs permanently and sits staring at me in
smug defiance. Since this little situation appeared several weeks ago I've
bought a new computer, and the only reason I am spending time on this is
because I have lots of information I'd like to get off of the old hard
drive
(that, and the CD burner in my new computer makes CD's which won't play in
my 4 year old Pioneer car stereo - anybody have any input on that and know
a
way to work around it? (short of buying a new car stereo, thanks)) I've
done
searches on Google for bootable CD images, which I've tried, and
apparently
my new computer refuses to boot from the CD drive, as far as I can tell,
although I could be wrong. I'd like to find a bootable CD image which will
let me at least boot to DOS, but I haven't been able to find one so far.
I'd
make a bootable floppy with my new machine, but it doesn't have a floppy
drive, and I'm not spending the $$ on a USB floppy at this point. I do
have
the 3 system recovery CD's that came with the computer, but there are no
directions with them, and I can't get them to do anything, so right now
they
are worthless to me.

(I realize this is long, but I'm trying to include all parts of the
problem
and the things that I have tried to fix it up to this point.)

Ideally what I would like is to restore 100% functionality to the OS in my
Me machine simply so I can retrieve the data I need to and burn a bunch of
CD's with my old burner (which makes CD's my car stereo WILL
play...although
I tried installing my old burner on my new machine and XP threw a fit and
disabled the drivers.) However, at this point I think restoring 100%
functionality might be a little much to hope for, though I hope someone
proves me wrong! Thanks in advance to anyone who tries to tackle this!

Computer Info:
HP Pavilion xt919
WinMe
800Mhz Celeron
Phoenix BIOS v. 4.0 release 6.0.A
128MB RAM