Topic: Motherboard dead ? can I save any data

[David]

Most programs save everything to the C: drive by default.
Unless its saved to the folder for its own program which would be C:\program files\xxx where xxx is the name of the program, then they are usually saved to C:\ usernamexxx\documents where usernamexxx is your own account, even if theres only a single user account it will have accounts for admin and your name at least.
In the folder C:\ usernamexxx\documents you will also have folders for Video, Photos, Music and My Documents.
Windows will attempt to save files into which it thinks is the most appropriate.

Unfortunately unless you have booted to the operating system then these user accounts arent usually available so if you add the drive as a second drive in a different pc you cant access the information in those folders 

This is why I always advise people to take note of where windows wants to save files to and to change the location to anywhere but the windows default and not to the Desktop as that location is in your user account folder as well, preferably on another partition or hard drive if you have one.
If you only have a single partition then create a folder on C:, call it Saved files or similar, then create folders inside that for your documents, photos, music and videos or anything else.
That way if the windows OS fails for some reason and you cant boot into windows you can still access all your data if you use that drive in another pc.

Hope that you can follow that ok David and that you may benefit from it in the future
 

Would all of these  comments be applicable Sandra? the main things I want are photos would this be accessable on the other machine which I intend putting the hard drive into

[Sandra]

It depends where they are stored now David.
If its in the C:\username folder then you probably wont see them in the next PC. If its just in C: or on another partition then you would see them without any problems.

[David]

Thanks Sandra its just in the c...will try it later.
Im still getting the knowledge up to scratch and then Im off to Maplins to startd building.I did buy a 450 psu as this cannot be returned and not wanted to waste the £40 will this be powerful enough for a decent machine.To date the spec of this fan is or so it seems will be enough to be able to get a decent mobo...(getting the jargon lol)
The other machine has not been to repair shop yet but I intend to put back the original psu in there as it is large and not really imo suitable for the case so the case I get for the new one will be much larger to house such a long psu.

If all this makes sense

[Sandra]

450 should be ok for most PCs, unless you are running lots of fans and fancy lighting inside the case.

[David]

No Sandra no lights just a bog standard pc which I want to tailor to my needs and gaming isnt my thing just a fast cpu and the machine will be used for a bit of browsing and Email just ordinary stuff.