Windows stuck on logo screen, drive letters Changed so windows cant fx

Hi,

My laptop's monitor was requiring me to move lid slightly to be able to see anything. Yesterday it started to smoke and smelled like it was burning. I immediately shut down computer. When I tried to restart, it was very dim and then stopped. I attached an external monitor and the ACER screen comes up but it gets stuck at the windows logo.

I tried all the automatic windows repairs that would not disturb data. None could get system restarted. Since then I have been able to identify that somehow the windows files ended up in a "D" drive and the "C" drive has no files. I am running chkdsk /f/r/d: at the moment. It would not allow it on "C," said that it was NTFS system and that it was write protected.

Is this the reason that the repair did not work, or did the repair cause the drives to change?

I am downloading Ubuntu to a flash drive in another computer to try to remove my data files. I am a University professor in the middle of finals and need to recover my students' grades and work. Please help!

Any suggestions?

Thank you Essenbe. I burned recovery disks before I used the laptop, so I will see if that works to get the data. It seems easier than the Ubantu route.

The drives should be readable because I can see the directories on the black screen with dos prompt, can't remember what it is called. However, I am baffled as to how the drives switched letters?

Once I get the data copied and out of the computer, I will arrange for a warranty repair.

Right now I am giving a final exam, so I will try your suggestion as soon as I get home.

My son suggested doing just that, but he is NY and I am in FL and I was scared of removing the drive. He did it for me on another laptop and gave me a "cradle" that holds the drive so it can be used as an external drive. When I get home I may just gather up my courage and remove the drive. Seems faster than dealing with Recovery disks and Ubuntu!

Thank you so much.

Well, I got home filled with courage to remove hard drive from laptop and found that chkdsk had done some repair to bad clusters and everything else was checking ok. So I shut down the computer and restarted it while using F8 to enter is safe mode. Windows came on so I transferred my student's grades. It was taking too long, so I decided against transferring remaining files and shut down the computer. Restarted it again normally and it is now working beautifully. Therefore, now I can backup everything. When finals are over I will deal with the warranty for the fried screen.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ENCOURAGEMENT AND SUGGESTIONS, IT HELPED TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE NICE PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO TAKE TIME TO HELP THOSE OF US WHO DO NOT KNOW VERY MUCH ABOUT COMPUTERS. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME!!!