oldhenry

Hello What a useful facility this is. I have just joined this forum but did look through threads and could not see my issue. I have an old computer using Windows 2000 professional that suddenly stopped loading windows, it had a error message which was asking for something to be reloaded. As the disks were long mislaid it was a case if getting a new PC, which I have, using XP. But I have heard about these caddies that could retrieve data. I have the old hard disk which is IDE but would a caddy work even though the windows on that HDD was playing up? Is the data available even though the operating system is not 'operating'? I hope that is not confusing. I have meddled with PCs for years , but hoping my nice HP will not need it for a very long time. I do not know why Windows 2000 just packed up like that but many say - What Windows 2000- that's not been used for years. Thanks , sorry rather verbose.