Member Avatar for comradejrew

I just bought a nice new laptop the other day, but I am faced with a quandry:

My old computer has a cooked motherboard, yet I need to get my old files off the damn thing.

Now said old piece of crap is an Acer M3802, it has Intel Quadcore (Q8300) and 3GB of DDR2 ram. Other than that, There's bugger all out there about it.

When I turn it on, the light comes on, the computer revs and does nothing. No bleeps, no nothing. The little blue power light is on and that's it. I have no money or need to buy a NEW Processor as this one is being cut up for spares. I do however have a computer that I can butcher for parts, and planned to rob the motherboard from it, put it in the Acer, start it, remove the files and then cut the thing up into little pieces.


So in short, is what I'm saying doable?

Edited by comradejrew because: Not Enough Info
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  • Latest Post Latest Post by nocindy
Member Avatar for mechbas

"So in short, is what I'm saying doable? "

In short, MAYBY! Best bet is to salvage HD and scrap the rest. The files will still be there if the HD is operational.

Member Avatar for nocindy

comradejrew, I had a similiar issue when my desktop wouldn't boot into the user partition and my last backup was about a week old. I needed to recover all the new documents before I could do a reinstall.

My suggestion is to get an external HD case and remove the HD from your old PC. It is easy to install into the case and connect to your laptop using a USB port and it then becomes a USB drive. You can access your data and copy it onto the laptop.

Once you have completed that, you can now use the old drive as an external backup drive. The cases are relatively cheap, I think I paid about $50 more or less for it. Of course, there are higher end ones, but if like me your main concern is to retrieve your data, that would be my suggestion. Just be sure to buy one that is compatible with your internal HD - SATA or PATA.

Good luck and I hope this helps you out!

Member Avatar for mechbas

that's very nice cindy but I think the following already given applies: "I have no money or need to buy a NEW Processor as this one is being cut up for spares."

Member Avatar for nocindy

Perhaps you misunderstood that my suggestion was meant to retrieve your data from the hard drive in the PC with the cooked MB. Understanding you don't have the money for a new processor or parts to try and bring the cooked system back to life, my suggestion was to help you salvage your HD and data and also be able to use it for either additional storage or a back up device.

If there was a misunderstanding, my apologies.

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