Anyone Good With Computers?

[Shaun'sLadySolaris]

I need information off of my old CPU drive, is their anyway I could hook it up to my new computer to get the information? I really need my old passwords to my hotmail accounts plus some old work. I know that in the past (say it could be a year) if I wanted to reactivate my old accounts I could, but apparently you need the original computer because he passwords would be stored on the hard drive , anyway that's what hotmail's Help thingy said. I've had a lot of contacts from my old hotmail account and have no other way to get them again, because some of the fourms I used to belong to are long gone now. Thanks for any help you can offer me.

[Kafriel]

Sooo....get a screwdriver and use your old HDD on your new PC. Don't need computer knowledge for that, right?

[Shaun'sLadySolaris]

That's the thing I don't want to install the old hard drive on my new computer. I just want to be able to copy the information on the old hard drive on to somthing else. Any suggestions?

[xris]

If you had a text file with your old passwords listed (in plain English) then fair enough but I suspect that isn't the case.

I assume you used to have your old PC set up so the passwords for your hotmail account were stored and you didn't need to enter them each time you logged into hotmail. In that case it's not going to be easy to do what you want.

Why not click on the "forgotten your password" link when you log into hotmail?

[Kafriel]

Well, you'll have to plug it somewhere, can't extract digital info by analog means...if you've got an extra PC, you could use that one to get the work done. Suggestion for the future: keep your passwords in texts, keep them somewhere safe in an external disk or a small flash so that you don't have to do this again.

EDIT: If it's just a cookie issue then I second Xris' suggestion :P

[killer3000ad]

Why do you have multiple hotmail accounts ? You been setting up multiple forum accounts and sock puppets for trolling and debating? Just kidding.

Well, if your old box still works, why not start it up again, login in to your hotmail accounts and change the passwords to something you remember.

If your old computer is kaput, well then it gets more complicated. You say you don't want to install it in your new comp, and want a way to extract what you want without doing that. The crux of the problem is that accessing the info in the old HDD requires it to be installed in a computer for it to be accessed. HDD isn't some external drive that you can plug it with a USB connector and have everything you want straight away.

Sorry dude, you gotta do it the hardway, which really isn't hard at all.

[Random32]

1. boot up the old box, not hard
2. use an external HDD enclosure like these http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCateg...nal-Enclosures
3. take the hard drive out, go to your local computer repair dude and ask him for help

[Wervy]

Were you using firefox? I know for a fact that it allows you to view all your saved passwords just by going into the security tab under options. Not sure if other browsers offer the ability to view them so simply since the last IE user I encountered with the same problem needed to use IE PassView.

[SeijiSensei]

If the old computer is bootable, but you don't want to move the drive, you could connect it with an ethernet cable to the router your new computer is using and move the files over the network. You'll need to mark the old drive as sharable, which I think is just a click or two in Windows (don't use that myself). Then you should be able to use the "map a network drive" feature in Windows on the new box to see the old drive over the network.

Here's one thing I found from a quick Google search on sharing a drive in Windows: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304040.

[Wervy]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

If the old computer is bootable, but you don't want to move the drive, you could connect it with an ethernet cable to the router your new computer is using and move the files over the network. You'll need to mark the old drive as sharable, which I think is just a click or two in Windows (don't use that myself). Then you should be able to use the "map a network drive" feature in Windows on the new box to see the old drive over the network.

Here's one thing I found from a quick Google search on sharing a drive in Windows: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304040.

Oh, what software are you using for password recovery over a network share?

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by Wervy

Oh, what software are you using for password recovery over a network share?

Her needs were quite specific:

I wanted to reactivate my old accounts I could, but apparently you need the original computer because he passwords would be stored on the hard drive , anyway that's what hotmail's Help thingy said. I've had a lot of contacts from my old hotmail account and have no other way to get them again, because some of the fourms I used to belong to are long gone now. Thanks for any help you can offer me.

I'm guessing that things like Hotmail settings and contacts are stored in browser cookies or the browser's own authentication system if she uses webmail, or in the settings for something like Outlook. If she can share the old drive as world-readable, she can copy over stored settings in C:\Documents and Settings\Users or wherever else the settings might be stored. I'm not saying this is an easy task, but mounting the drive into the target computer doesn't provide any additional advantage that I can see over mounting it across the network with an Ethernet cable. Moving the drive physically seems like a task the OP would prefer to avoid.

In the olden days, I'd use serial port transfer programs to copy information from one machine to another. Got a whopping 115.2 Kbit, 230 if you used compression!

[Wervy]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Her needs were quite specific:



I'm guessing that things like Hotmail settings and contacts are stored in browser cookies or the browser's own authentication system if she uses webmail, or in the settings for something like Outlook. If she can share the old drive as world-readable, she can copy over stored settings in C:\Documents and Settings\Users or wherever else the settings might be stored. I'm not saying this is an easy task, but mounting the drive into the target computer doesn't provide any additional advantage that I can see over mounting it across the network with an Ethernet cable. Moving the drive physically seems like a task the OP would prefer to avoid.

Never mind, thought you were speaking from experence. For future refrence IE stores password info in the registry, unlike crome or firefox.

[SeijiSensei]

Ah, Microsoft. Let's put everything into the nearly-indecipherable registry and make simple tasks ridiculously hard.

You can write out the registry to files, as I recall? Would this help, Wervy?

[Shaun'sLadySolaris]

Thanks everyone for your help with this, I wlll try each suggestion.