PC freezes at login screen - need to rescue documents

My PC is running Win 7 x64bit. Over the last couple of weeks after installing windows updates the PC boots up but when I get to the login screen to select my account the PC is frozen, no mouse no keyboard working all I can do is turn of the PC and start again.

I have used my system repair disk and chosen a restore point, this seemed to cure the problem but I have had to do this about 4 times. Yesterday the computer froze again but even doing system restore did not work, I have tried various dates to restore but it still keeps freezing.

I am not an expert but have tried various things like booting from my Win 7 upgrade disk to repair windows but this did not work. Currently I am running the Dell diagnostics which I accessed from the Boot menu, it is telling me that there are read errors on the disk and there are some areas it cannot read. I think I will need to contact Dell to replace the disk (PC is 2yrs old). But my main problem is how can I rescue my documents from the hard drive?

I have an external drive but never got round to making backups!

Any help would be appreciated.

Ok will give it a go, do I download the 64bit Ubuntu as my pc is 64bit?

Another option would be to slave that drive in another PC. Then use that PCs working OS to access and copy your files to a safe place.

To get your PC working again, you need to anyway buy or get another hard drive, correct?

You could buy that, put it in the system, install Windows onto it, and then connect your failing drive as a secondary drive. Now you can run chkdsk, and recover as much data as possible.

BriceH said:

Hi, shirl, and welcome to the Seven Forums.

What you can do is burn an install CD of Ubuntu, boot it up, and then select "Try Ubuntu" instead of "Install Ubuntu". Now, you are running the full operating system. You should now be able to find your Windows drive and copy all of its data to the external hard drive.

Brilliant - have rescued all of my files, thanks very much for your help.

Shirl