Thanks for the thought Colin.

I have since done a clean install on a new drive and mounted the old drive
as Drive 2. Having taken ownership of the old disk, all the data in user
docs seems to be readable and intact.

I've returned the box to its owner, so I am unable to do no further research
on it.

And I've shown them how to use Vista backup and Acronis. So hopefully they
will avoid the same mess in the future.

"Colin Barnhorst" wrote:

> "Jonno" <Jonno@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:63C261F1-DFE1-4FF3-84BE-0B91ABC16B7C@microsoft.com...
> >I have a Dell Dimension E520, which won’t boot to Windows (Vista), as
> > described in the following thread:
> >
> > http://www.microsoft.com/communities...2b8e92&lc=1033
> >
> > I have given up trying to repair Vista, but now I would like to back up
> > the
> > data on the drive before doing a clean install.
> >
> > I have mounted the HD in a working XP box and tried to backup the contents
> > with Norton Ghost 2003 and Acronis True Image 11 Home. Neither
> > Application
> > can back up the Documents and Settings folder.
> >
> > If Vista fails both to load and to repair itself, as described in the
> > thread, how are users supposed to retrieve their data safely?
> >
>
> Because what you are describing sounds like a hard drive issue, not Vista.
> Can you run the hard drive mfg's drive test program while the drive is
> connected to the XP box?
>