File Retrieval from Broken Laptop.

The first thing you will have to do is clean the laptop of the virus. You will not be able to install an anti-virus program directly from an internet download, you will have to have a disc in order to go around the virus. Transfering the pictures will transfer the virus on to any further computers that you use those pictures on. Secondly, I also recommend an external Terrabyte drive. 1000 pictures is more than a CD or flash drive will hold unless they are very small files, which I doubt.
It really depends on how comfortable you are working with a computer. If you feel pretty comfortable than it is something you can do yourself. If you are not I highly recommend paying a professional to save your pictures. Memories are worth a small price to save IMO.

A thousand pictures is going to take up a lot of space. CDs for sure won't handle it but not knowing the file size I can't say for sure if 4 gb is enough. Portable external hard drives are cheap and usb. I picked up a 500 gb for 30 dollars. Then you can just transfer them there and deal with them at your leisure.

I agree with the external hard drive because it is a good idea to have one irregardless to back up your current computer's files before you have an issue with it.

D.:

Unless the pictures were "downsized", one CD will, most likely, not be enough.

Take the laptop to Office Depot (not sure if you are closer to Palm Springs or La Quinta) and ask them to retrieve the data and pictures. It will be a $50 charge initially -possibly more. If they CANNOT retrieve the pictures, you will get your money back. They may be able to remove the virus as well.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Best Buy will charge you a fee to retrieve your data and put it on a disk or to another computer for you. Go to their store with your laptop and go to the Geek desk and they will do it for you.

Sorry about your computer.

Dawn

IME, the Easyshare software is a nightmare!

I know I can get around it by opening files with Preview or Photoshop & drag-n-drop on my Mac. Can you do that with your IBM? If you have any other means of opening the photos/files, I would take out the EasyShare software.

I would personally use an external harddrive-reader, pull the harddrive from the computer, and hook it up to the new computer. This was how we saved my data for the last two computers we lost. However, depending on the virus, it may or may-not transfer too. Do you know what the virus was? Finding out whether it will infect your new computer should be your first step.

I agree with the external hard drive and copy them over if your computer will let you. If the computer is really broken, you may want to move the actual hard drive from the old computer into a separate hard drive enclosure with a usb connector (they cost about $10 to $30). Plug it into your new computer and see if you can copy from there. You won't be booting from the old drive so it may not crash. If it won't read because it knows it's boot drive, you can download a free partition software (my laptop broke recently and I used Mini Tool Partition Wizard). It if recognizes your drive, you can download their recovery software which will let you recover up to 100MB for free. If you have more than that, their full version of the software costs $59. I was able to recover pretty much everything on my hard drive doing this instead of spending $100's going to a professional data recovery service.