whats a UPS
i'm a computer tech dude...
UPS is lingo for Uninterruptible Power Supply.
The only time i personally fried major components all at once was when i hooked an IDE power connector backwards. I was "hot swapping" (I got lazy...lol) and even though the molex connector is polarized, ie goes on one way, I got it close enough that it arced...the power shot thru the ground plane, and took out the CDrom, the hard drive, various other components...lol
i feel for you.
One thing: windows protextion error does not necessarily mean the hard drive is totally kaput. I mean, its EASIER to use another hard drive, or to format it and start over again, but...
Maybe, just MAYBE, you could buy a small hard drive to put windows on fresh and get the comp running. Your old hard drive put separate.....
then, you connect the old hard drive as a data drive, and maybe you can read the files off you want. Worth a shot. I get windows protection errors when i am installing win98se on an older PC "headache" motherboard. Genrerally, windows protextion errors means accessing a resource illegally (like memory in a protected range, for instance) its a boot up issue, which is why i striongly suspect you could take out old hard drive, get another and put windows on and install track software to get up and running, then use old hard drive as a data drive. Probably nothing wrong with hard drive, just having trouble booting up? see, if the hard drive was physically shot, it wouldnt even BEGIN to boot up to GIVE you trhe windows protection errir in the first place. Im not saying the drivers and boot sector aint shot to hell, but you might be able to read it as a data drive.