A Windows that refuses to boot has usually not taken your files with it. Boot NHV Boot, and the same drive becomes readable again — so you can copy everything off safely before anyone attempts a repair. Order matters more than tools here, and this page keeps the order right.
Windows is broken" and "my data is gone" are two very different problems, and confusing them is how data actually gets lost — usually during a panicked reinstall. If the drive itself is alive, NHV Boot lets you work on it from outside: boot from USB, open the dead Windows drive like an ordinary disk, and copy the data to safety first. Only after the files are safe does repair become a low-stress job. NHV Boot carries both halves of this work — plain file access for intact data, and dedicated recovery tools (Active File Recovery, MiniTool Power Data Recovery, EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard) for deleted or formatted data. Here is the sequence professionals follow.
Every repair action writes to the disk: reinstalls overwrite, repairs shuffle files, and a failing drive gets weaker with every hour of work. So the order is fixed — secure the data, then fix Windows. Boot NHV Boot, open the internal drive in the file manager (Total Commander is included and excellent for big copies), and locate the profile folder at C:\Users\<name> — remembering that drive letters inside WinPE often differ from normal Windows, so identify the drive by its size and contents, not its letter.
Two minutes here can save the whole job. Open CrystalDiskInfo or Hard Disk Sentinel (both included) and read the drive's SMART health. Good means copy normally. Caution means copy the most valuable folders first, smallest decisions later — the drive may not survive a full pass. A drive showing Bad, or one making clicking or grinding noises, is a different category: stop, keep it powered off, and treat it as a professional lab recovery. Spinning a dying drive inside a PE environment, however good the toolkit, only spends the life it has left.
Connect an external drive with enough free space, then copy the profile folders: Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Videos and Music. Add anything the user kept elsewhere — accounting data on D:, a folder on the C: root, Outlook data files. Copy, never cut: the originals stay untouched until the copies are verified. If the drive is BitLocker-locked, NHV Boot can unlock it — but only with the password or the 48-digit recovery key from the owner's Microsoft account. Without the key there is no access, for anyone, and any tool promising otherwise is lying to you.
If files were deleted or the partition was formatted, simple copying finds nothing — that is the recovery tools' territory. Open Active File Recovery, MiniTool Power Data Recovery or EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, scan the affected drive, and — this rule has no exceptions — save recovered files to a different drive. Recovering onto the same disk overwrites the very data still waiting to be found. A formatted drive that has had nothing written to it since usually gives back a great deal; a drive that kept being used gives back less with every file written. Set expectations accordingly and let deep scans finish — on large drives they take real time.
When SMART is ugly but the drive still reads, the professional move is to stop working on the original entirely. Use Macrium Reflect or R-Drive Image (both in NHV Boot) to make a sector image of the failing drive onto a healthy one, then run all recovery attempts against the image. The original gets read exactly once, in one controlled pass, instead of being hammered by scan after scan. If imaging itself fails with masses of read errors, the honest advice is the same as with clicking drives: that is now lab work, and continuing at home mostly converts an expensive recovery into an impossible one.
Editions, USB creation, first boot and the full tool tour — everything in this guide, shown live on real machines.
▶️ Watch Full VideoYes, in most cases. NHV Boot runs from USB and reads the internal drive directly, without needing the installed Windows to start. The main exception is a BitLocker-locked drive without its recovery key, or a physically failed drive.
That works too, but NHV Boot avoids opening the laptop — important for sealed ultrabooks and warranty seals. Booting from USB also keeps a suspect drive read-only until you decide to act.
Part of the file was overwritten before the scan — the name and size survive, the content is partly gone. This is normal on drives that kept being used after deletion, and it is why copying data off early matters more than any recovery software.