Connecting to a broken laptop.

[thebigchill]

I have two laptops, one brand new, and one where the screen is broken & virtually unreadable. Is there a way i can connect my new laptop to my old one to get all the files off it? Remote assistance is disabled on the broken one, and i cant see the scren well enough to sign up for gotomypc.com...anyone any ideas?

[andyswann]

Could you take the hard drive out and connect it via USB?

[vehelpfulguy]

There are ways to connect them together, but you would probably need to change some settings in Windows on the duff laptop.

Have you go a spare monitor you can plug in to the duff laptop? All laptops usually support an external screen.

If you have a spare screen then the easiest way is to log on to the "duff" laptop, plug a USB memory stick in, and copy all the data off the duff laptop to the memory stick.

Then plug the memory stick into the gopod laptop and copy all the data off the memory stick to the good laptop.

If you have not got a spare screen then it may be difficult as most conection methods will require you to make some changes to Windows on the duff laptop, which is not easy to do if you cannot see the screen.

[vehelpfulguy]

My other sugestion would be as andyswann says

Buy an empty USB caddy for a 2.5" hard drive.

Take the hard drive out the duff laptop and put it in the caddy.

Plug the caddy into the USB slot of the good laptop, and then copy data from the external hard disk to the good laptop hard disk.

[dot.hawkes]

just popping in to say hi chilly!!! (Hi!!)

[ACtheTROLL]

as vhg says how about starting by plugging in an external screen?
then you can share the disk and network or set up IIS and rdc
or install tsweb ... or use VNC .... or .... or ...
or you could do as andy suggests and buy a usb enclosure - that way you can ditch the lappy and gain a usb disk.

depends how new the laptop is (was) and how big the disk is

both have merits