Problems booting an old desktop

Adirondack jack

Member
SoSH Member
Aug 24, 2008
1,584
Have a problem with an old desktop and am hoping to at least retrieve some items from its harddrive. It was running with Windows 7 before the issue. When I try to boot the machine now it says BOOTMGR is compressed. Press ctrl+alt+del to restart. When I do so though it just returns to the same black screen.
 
Can I (functionally illiterate tech-wise) at least get this ancient slow as a molasses machine to boot one last time or should I office space this thing and be done with it? The contents on the hard-drive is worth more to us than having the machine working again fwiw
 
Thanks for any and all assistance.
 
 
 

Monbo Jumbo

Hates the crockpot
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 5, 2003
25,231
the other Athens
You can remove the hard drive. get a USB hard drive case for it. Then plug it into another machine to access the files on it.