Question : Problem: Need to recover data from an apparently bad hard drive

I have a Compaq Evo N1020v that has worked great for several years.  Eariler today, it was working fine, but I needed to reboot to re-establish a wireless connection.  While trying to reboot, I kept getting a flash of blue screen and then a restart.  After trying this several times, I ended up getting a message of "operating system not found".

As luck would have it, I just bought a USB external 2.5" Hard drive case yesterday as I had a client whose motherboard when out and they wanted to save the data from the hard drive.  Well, I can connect their hard drive to my PC and immediately see what is on the hard drive.  When I connect my hard drive, I get nothing--and a different drive letter designation.

I would appreciate any suggestions of how to retrieve this data.

Answer : Problem: Need to recover data from an apparently bad hard drive

Just leave the USB drive out of it for the time being. What happens when you let the PC sit turned off for a while, then reboot? does it find the Operating system then? If it does, press f8 when booting, so you will get an extended boot menu. Here one of the selections should be to not to autorestart if you get a failure or BSOD. Now you should be able to read what the BSOD says. Can you give us the Stop error you see? Also, sometimes BSODs occur when trying to load a certain driver or dll, and often that file is listed somewhere close to the bottom. Can you also tell us that filename, if any?

If it doesn't boot, download memtest86 from http://memtest.org and let it test your memory. If is doesn't fail on first pass, give it at least 5 passes.