So I've got this laptop that was stuck in an infinite boot loop (I feel that I should mention that it would reboot after showing the windows loading screen), chances are OS is corrupt, right? So we decide to reinstall, but first I've got to get the data off. The hard drive is IDE, 60GB I believe, and the first thing I did was try connecting it to my desktop with an IDE converter that allows me to connect it to the standard ribbon cables in a desktop (*Note my desktop is still running on standard IDE, nothing SATA). I did have to play around with the jumper settings on the laptop HDD to find the right one that would allow my desktop to see it, and finally found it. The desktop booted into windows, was running kinda sluggish, and it saw the HDD but I couldn't access it. Said it needed to be formatted first, well nuts to that, I've gotta get the data off first. So I went into the disk management utility and saw it there. I saw my desktop's HDD as Disk 0 and the laptop HDD as Disk 1. Typically in this situation in the past for me, it would say that Disk 1 was foreign, and that I had to import it. This action would typically allow me to then access the data. Well that option wasn't there. I did notice the option to convert it to a Dynamic disc, and stupid me, tried that instead. Well the process started, I had an hour glass and nothing else, and it kinda sat there for a few minutes. Then I got paranoid and when I couldn't stop the process by exiting the disk management window, I did a hard reset. The computer booted back into windows, ran slow, and the the first thing I did was go back into Disk management. It still saw both HDDs and showed the laptop HDD as dynamic, but I still couldn't get into it. So I disconnected it from the desktop, and tried plugging it into a USB adapter into another laptop that I have. Well this second laptop saw the drive, and I went into disk management, where it still showed the drive as dynamic, but I finally had the option to import the drive as foreign (I should have used the USB adapter and 2nd laptop in the first place!). well I successfully import the drive, and went to explore it. The damn thing still denied access. Well thats about where I'm at. Recommendations, suggestions, anything would be appreciated Please and thank you!

When the system restarts during log on it may be the problem of the corrupted operating system. But this may be due to hardware problem also. I don't know about the configuration of your laptop. If it has windows XP operating system in it and if it has sata hard disk it it. Then there is an option in the Bios called sata native support. It this is enable and there is windows xp operating system. Then the system reboots during log on. So please disable this feature in the bios. And if this is the case then without any problem you can use the same hard disk you can log on to windows.

Thanks for the reply, I have however, moved on since then and I believe I wound up formatting the drive. I suppose I should mark this thread as solved then lol