Computer repair question


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Someone has recently asked me to look at a computer that they say won't turn on anymore. It is an older computer, but I am guessing that it is running windows. They want to at least take the data from the harddrive of the computer that doesn't work and transfer it to another computer such as a laptop.

The thing is, I would have to go the place where the computer is to see what exactly is going on. I'm not sure if it's a bad power supply or if it could be an accumulation of dust or if the computer just crashed for some reason. I'm not experienced in data recovery, but I am wondering if there is something easy that could be done. I've changed out components in the computer before, but I haven't taken out a harddrive and put it in another computer nor have I done a data transfer of the contents of one harddrive to another. I should also mention that apparently, nothing was ever backed up on the computer experiencing the issue.

I realize that is vague and limited information, but can anyone help me out?

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I have taken a look at the machine and here is what I have found:

I'm thinking that the reason that the computer won't start up is because it's got a lot of dust inside. I'm also thinking about the possibility of a bad power supply. They indicated that the computer would "freeze up when accessing the Internet and that there were signs of a problem beginning to happen, but nothing was backed up."

They have one other tower computer, which is running Vista (64-bit). I took out the harddrive from the computer that wasn't working. The ribbon cable connecting the drive was the traditional wide grey cable. Looking inside the other computer, I found that it had a narrower ribbon cable, which was all red.

I took the drive home because I have an older computer (Windows 98) that uses the same wide grey cable. What I am trying to figure out is how to slave the drive so that I can put in the computer and hopefully get Windows to see it. This particular drive has two jumper pins (one which runs horizontal and the other which runs vertical). There are three diagrams on the back (lower 32GB, upper 32GB, and 32GB clip). I pulled the ribbon cable off the drive in my old computer and what I have is a short ribbon cable with a drive connector in the middle and on the top.

The drive that I need to figure out the jumper settings on is a Samsung 80GB drive with two rows of four pins.

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