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Hmmm.... If you believe you are loading something, then the disk is already spinning, right? An impact to it may add more damage, if the cause is a problem with a disk platter. I suggest booting with some sort of rescue disk to see if you can get directly to the data you want to retrieve. The data on the disk needed to load Windows may be gone already. Gene On 1-13-2009 10:20 PM, Richard Wiggins wrote: > My wife's home computer, a very kewl as of 2001 Gateway > desktop-and-monitor PC, died today. The hard drive is able to begin > to boot Windows XP -- you see the logo -- so that implies that some > data is loading from the disk. However you hear lots of seeking > noises, and ultimately no finding. > > We probably don't have much data to salvage on it. I find that in a > cloud computing world, I've Gmailed just about anything of importance > to her or to whaterver person I'm working with. > > Still, I would like to take one last look at the hard drive. So my > question is, and I'm not kidding -- how hard do I hit it? Do I pick > up the unit and drop it? Do I take a rubber mallet to it? Do I > gently tap it as it tries to boot? > > Reminds me of a wisecrack circa 1979 -- on a clear disk, you can seek > forever. > > Thanks, > > /rich