Ok I really need help.I tried to add an xtra mem card to my sony vaio desktop,not much room inside the case to manuever the card into the slot easily,and INSTEAD of taking out the floppy drive(which I never use), I sort of pushed it through the slot(dragging it on the pins in the plug) til it was centered then pushed it in and locked the tabs.I started it and got the black "Your comp.was either not shut down properly...or you installed new hardware" screen I clicked on the restart normally option waited, the windows XP sceen flashed then went back to the black "improper shutdown" screen.I tried selecting "start in safe mode" it seemed like it tried but froze on the list of startup items screen.I tried norm.start, no good.I went back and removed the memory card  I installed and tried to restart again w/only my orig.256MB card,this time all I got was constant beeping,blank screen. I went back in again and found the memory card not plugged in fully and noticed a difference in the other plug slot, the difference was 2 small pieces of metal(silver)possibly pieces of the prongs inside the DIMM slot which may have came off from PUSHING the card through the slot,I removed those pieces, installed both memory cards and tried to restart, I got the NTLDR screen this time (I think) I ended up removing all the memory cards (I dont know if they could've gotten damaged by having the metal in the slot and turning the comp.on)and installed 1 card I know is good and tried again,same thing,I removed the hard drive and tried it in another XP mach. same thing-NTLDR is missing.I put the HD back in orig. mach.and tried again. I got a black screen SAYING something like an error... install system disk... I only have Sony sys. recovery disks 1,2,3 Application recovery disks 1,2 and Driver recovery disk,so I tried the Sys. recovery disk 1 but when I got to the option to partition drive I didn't want to completely erase my HD ( no other options)Does anyone have any advice on what I should do?Can I get into the HD to save my files before recovering?Is there any way to test the motherboard,DIMM slots and or memory cards to see if they are damaged? I was thinking about taking it to Best Buy(where I bought it in 2001) and letting the Geek Squad  check it,but,I already spent 19.95 on Sony tel.support only to be told they think I need to do a full sys. recovery(which they will walk me through)I know this is a long post,so thanks to anyone who has the patience to read it,I'd appreciate any feedback.Take your computer to the shop.Dragging it thru the slot has probably damaged contacts in the slot...be prepared to purchase a new MBoard.

patio.  I would take it to the shop where they should have a MICROSCOPE, or jewellers/electronics magnifying glass, to be able to see the fine contacts in detail and see if there is any damage and whether it can be repaired or not.

Take the modules with you.

If you CLICK on the link below you'll come to an IDE/USB converter for use with USB2 which will allow your drive to be connected to another computer for data recovery. The shop will probably have one so all you need are data CDRs or data DVDs for them to burn your data to a safe place.

Keep the floppy drive it can come in VERY useful for repairs. Not least you can image from a floppy with Image for DOS which actually reads NTFS, and you can also edit the boot.ini file, and boot to the hard drive, if you have a floppy, FULL formatted by any XP computer, with just the ntldr, ntdetect.com and right boot.ini file on it.Just try discharging the power from the motherboard.

Remove power cord and then push the on botton. Obviously your pc wont start, but the power that was on the motherboard would be discharged.

Place power cable back. and try starting then. Resset BIOS settings when trying to re-insert the memory modules..

When you do get a successfull boot, try optimizing the BIOS by loading Factory settings instead of BIOS Defaults.