Windows XP wont start. What can I still salvage from the HDD?

[RuneEdge]

A few days ago, my PC stopped booting XP for some reason. Something to do with system32/hal.dll missing or whatever. I used my sisters laptop to see if theres a fix for it. I found about 7 different "working" methods that I could try but none of them worked, including reinstalling windows, installing another windows on a spare HDD and using the main one as a slave, fiddling with the boot.ini, etc.
The only thing I knew would work for me for sure was to back everything up and reformatting the PC. I've already been through this about 3 times in the past and there was nearly 300gb of data to backup and around 30 DVD-Rs wasted. There was no way I was gonna go do that again.
So this morning I bought a nice new laptop to replace my PC. The plan is to have this laptop as my main computer and the desktop as a backup or spare. I took the HDDs out of my PC, put them into a external harddrive enclosure and transferred all my files onto the laptop.

My question, what else can I salvage from the HDD? and how?
I'm talking about things like bookmarks from Firefox and IE, or device drivers that came with the PC (which I'll need when I reformat the thing cuz I don't have a CD for them), etc.
Files copy over easily but its all the settings and configurations that I need. Can anyone help?

 

[Revan]

getting the device drivers without accessing windows is very hard, I surely can't remember a way to do it. I know the device drivers are somewhere around the windows folder (system32\drivers folder). But I really can't be sure. you can try copying the entire folder and when reinstalling drivers, manually, you point the wizard to the folder on whatever media you used to copy the files. But it's not guaranteed it will work.

You best bet is to go the manufacturers website for your components and get the proper drivers. You need to know your components brand/make and model.

About bookmarks, firefox saves them here:
C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxx.default\bookmarks.html
Don't know IE cause I simple don't use IE.

 

[MonkeyJug]

if you're reinstalling with vista, then the driver issue shouldn't really be a problem, as vista should automatically recognise and reinstall pretty much all of them.

if on xp, then just visit the website of the device/motherboard manufacturer and you'll find them that way. also, just google the device manager id, and you'll find out exactly what driver you need. it's really not that much of an issue...

 

[Revan]

btw rune, use the foxmarks add-on. That way you always have access to your bookmarks.

 

[RuneEdge]

Thanks. Foxmarks is pretty useful.
And I found the old bookmarks in that directory you posted, so thanks again.