Thanks guys! But I just had a one in a million shot of luck. After reading your previous posts I started examining the DW old laptop to see if I could figure out what kind of drive it had (before taking it apart again). Then I realized that my laptop was the same series # as hers, just newer (and windows 10. Hers was windows 7).
So I made a recovery drive on a 128GB USB drive and tried it in her laptop. I tried changing the boot order all around, but I never got past the windows logo without the machine saying that "there is a problem with your computer and will restart".
I was about ready to give up so I figured I would just return to the original HDD boot, and see if I plugged in the USB drive while it was starting if it would recognize it. I pulled the USB drive and hit the power button again, but this time the thing started to boot up!
It made it all the way through, and I was able to get to the start page. I opened up and went right to the back up manager. I stuck the USB drive back in and copied all of her documents. It only took seconds. Then I figured what the heck, I am now attempting to make a copy of her whole hard drive. She didn't have a lot of stuff on it, so it should fit easily on the USB drive.
Yaay! Thanks for the bump, I may not have ever started examining the computer specs without your help.
