help2go.com — Has your Windows computer ever failed to boot or refused to go online? You know that if you could just get online you could search for an answer to your problem. Thats why you have to get one of that Linux Live Cds.
Nov 10, 2005 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountNov 10, 2005
Unfortonately you sometimes do need a Linux Live CD and there is nothing you can do about it because no Microsoft product can help you out.I had a brown out which showed me that my UPS didn't work anymore, in addition to that it caused some sort of corruption of my NTFS harddrive partition so that my system would Blue Screen of Death(BSOD) on boot up. At first I thought it was hardware related but a diagnostics disk later everything checked out so I popped my HDD into another WinXP machine as a slave and was greeted with the same BSOD at boot up. Being as clever as I am, I remembered that SATA is hot swappable so I disconnected the SATA connection on the drive and rebooted. After WinXP had loaded I plugged the drive in and watched the magic of PNP detect new hardware, install drivers, and finally mount the ... BSOD!!!I couldn't find an NTFS partition repair utility and the only free piece of software I could find that would mount an NTFS partition and allow me to get the data off that disk was Knoppix. It took me 20 minutes to download and burn, 15 minutes to boot and figure out how to connect to my other XP box via samba and an hour to transfer off all of the data that was otherwise unrecoverable.After that I popped in the Win XP CD and rebooted to reformat and reinstall Windows on the PC. Guess what happened while the Win XP setup was loading? It crashed, I've never see it happen before but when the setup go to where it detected the HDD, it must have tried to mount that poor NTFS partition and it crashed. I could have used a DOS boot disk and fdisk at this point but I had the Knoppix CD handy so I booted into that and blew away the partition.Sometimes you need a Linux Live CD and there is no Mcrosoft Product that can help you.
Closed AccountNov 10, 2005
Surprised they didn't mention Ubunutu, since it's the only live CD that I've tried that worked with all my hardware/systems first time (2 normal PCs and a laptop)Ubunutu or Knoppix and WHAX are the best I've found, though Knoppix and WHAX need nopcmcia typed on startup, which is a pain.. - Ben
krahzeeNov 11, 2005
I have been using knoppix for awhile now. Use it for two reasons:1) To save my ass when the PC won't boot (unless you back up EVERY day, chances are there will be a situation when the most recent file you were working on will be lost should a hard drive go. I take my most recent backup DVD to my other PC, Use print folders to generate and print a list of files on that disc, the take the list back to the other system and copy the files not listed to my flash drive. Quick and easy data recovery.2) To learn or become more familiar with Linux. It's an easy way to play around with linux without screwing anything up or installing an OS you only use occasionally. To me, since I already own XP, I would only use linux for thing windows could not do for me already.
turgiddahliaNov 11, 2005
Knoppix is fine for recovering data if need be but it can sometimes (note: SOMETIMES) play havoc with file structures, rendering the recovered data unreadable and useless. Find yourself a copy of BartPE if you've got the patience.
eazy_eNov 11, 2005
bitpopboogie: If you can keep windows running forever without a crash I'd pay you a million bucks to work for me. HELL! Bill Gates would pay you a million bucks. *Ever watch the 'demo' for win98 or XP or media ed. where Bill and other techs show off the features? Then it blue screens and they restart.... hilarious.
x_cell_er_8Nov 11, 2005
SCREW Windowz Just Install Linux!
grim322Nov 11, 2005
Grim322 again, Linux WILL read and copy NTFS files, but you will need to copy them to a FAT32 partition or burn to CD, it can't write to NTFS (at least not the distros I've tried.
shiftNov 14, 2005
*hugs his knoppix CD*My laptop hdd was messed up today, whacked in knoppix which let me back up my data and restored the OS, simple as.
linuxmannNov 17, 2005
Linux Owns You all!...
grim322Nov 17, 2005
"Linux Owns You all!.."If you will read the original article, there is nothing in there that says you should change to Linux. It is just a way to rescue the Windows system. If you were driving your Ford pick up truck in the wilderness and got stuck in the mud, would you refuse to be pulled out by a Chevy?
facer0Mar 14, 2006
test, good