Anyone good with Windows?

[liv]

So my brother emailed me in a panic, his friend's computer won't boot into Windows and he's scared to reinstall Windows in case he loses all her data. I know in theory reinstalling the OS is supposed to leave files untouched, but I also know that doesn't work very well. Does anyone know the black magic to save the files from the pre-boot screen? We've got as far as the Microsoft support documentation and some basic Google searches, anyone have anything better than that?

His description of the problem:

I have an XP disc. I booted it from the disc and it let me enter a recovery console. I tried a check disc recovery thing but that didnt help. If I run the fix boot program will it wipe all of R___'s data? Can I reinstall windows without wiping the C Drive? Is it easy? Is there a way of getting the data before reinstalling windows

Any suggestions much appreciated!

ETA: further question pulled up from the comments:

One little question, how do I get to the dos prompt? When I boot from the XP disc, I can enter the recovery console, reinstall windows or exit everything it seems to me. My research suggested that the recovery console doesn't give you enough access rights (?) to copy files to an external drive.

Comments

[pseudomonas]

i thought reinstalls wiped data on windows. i'd consider taking the hard drive out and copying everything (or everything valuable) on it.

[azurelunatic]

Seconded on the hard-drive-out-and-copy idea. That's my answer to a large number of problems.

This can be done either by taking the disk and shoving it in as the secondary disk in a working system, or getting an inexpensive (but compatible) hard drive enclosure kit and making it into a temporary external hard drive.

I recommend to do some serious searching on the processes for both of these before attempting.

[liv]

According to Microsoft themselves, reinstall should keep the data but reset the settings. According to people I know who've tried it this doesn't often happen in practice. How do you copy stuff from a hard drive if it's outside the computer? (I also suspect Screwy won't have the dexterity to unscrew the computer and take parts out of it, but he may be able to get help with that.)

[pseudomonas]

you get a widget to turn a hard drive into a giant usb drive. cost about a tenner. needs someone to do fiddly bits, yes. also needs another computer.

An alternative is to put in a new hard drive and install windows on that, then shove back the original disk as a second hard drive. this relies on having a spare hard drive slot, but is good if he wants more storage anyway.

[simont]

My first instinct in a case like this would be to boot the machine off an Ubuntu live-CD, which is a non-destructive measure that should allow you to get read-only access to what's left of the filesystem plus enough network access to copy any vital files off to another machine. Having backed up everything vital by that method, one can then try a reinstall without it being the end of the world if it doesn't work as planned.

(Removing the hard disk and putting it into another machine is also an option, but I tend to prefer approaches that don't require a screwdriver :-)

Of course, that does require a certain amount of Linux-fu, and I have no idea if anyone involved has got that.

[naath]

I'll second the idea of using a live CD to get access to the disk (although read-only, you'll need a network).

I have reinstalled windows on top of a funted windows install multiple times and had my data remain (it can end up a bit hidden because you get a new home directory, but if you remember what any of the files are called you can search for them). I can understand not feeling sure that that would work though.

[rho]

I had much the same problem recently, only I was using Vista, and I don't know whether XP would be even remotely the same, but anyway.

I booted from the windows disc and got to a command prompt from that. I also connected up a USB external hard drive, which windows managed to autodetect, and then copied across the content of the internal drive onto the external drive with the DOS command "xcopy".

xcopy c:\*.* /c /a /k /e

will copy everything from the c: drive onto whatever drive you're currently on. (So, in my case, the external drive was e: so I entered e:\ and then the above command.)

Don't know if he has an external drive available or not, but if he does, that's probably easy than taking the existing drive out of the broken computer and putting it into a working one temporarily.

All very helpful

[(Anonymous)]

Hello everybody,
It's good to have a sister with useful friends. I don't think I want to attempt taking a computer apart. I might take it down to a shop in Hove if it comes to that. I do have access to enough external hard drive space I think. I certainly know friends with them. I even think I have a dictophone with several gygabytes of available memory and crazy R does not have a lot on her computer. One little question, how do I get to the dos prompt? When I boot from the XP disc, I can enter the recovery console, reinstall windows or exit everything it seems to me. My research suggested that the recovery console doesn't give you enough access rights (?) to copy files to an external drive. Failing that I'll try and get hold of a linnux disc and see what happens, that might be fun and can't do too much damage. I do have a network of sorts in my house.
You guys are so cool
Ps. What does Linnux Fu mean?

Re: All very helpful

[mathcathy]

I don't know much about any of the rest of this but Linux-fu is being super-good with Linux (which is an alternative operating system to Windows).

Where karate-fu is super-good at karate, or juggling-fu is good at juggling ... "fu" has a meaning all of its own. Someone else can tell you its origin.

Re: All very helpful

[graydon]

"kung fu" = "skilled man"
"chi kung" = "energy skill"

These Chinese terms are usually transliterated now as "gong fu" and "qigong", but "kung fu" tip-toed into English in the 1970s.

So "fu" means "man", but got mistaken by English speakers for the adjective part of the phrase, and has been co-opted to mean "skill", with the implication of considerable or notable skill.

Re: All very helpful

[mathcathy]

Cool. That's a great explanation!!

Re: All very helpful

[(Anonymous)]

that's better than my problem. Now even if I failed to fix the computer can be a happy man

[liv]

Ooh, I'm glad to know this too, thanks for that etymological tidbit!

Backing up Windows from Linux

[lethargic_man]

Hello, Screwy.

Funnily enough, I had cause to try and rescue Windows from Linux when my machine died (after a Micros~1 software update) on my first day at my new job yesterday.

I tried rescuing it using a Fedora 10 Live DVD. This didn't mount the Windows hard drive manually automatically. I was able to do so by the following sequence of commands, entered at the command line (Applications -> System Tools -> Terminal):

su -
mkdir /mnt/windows
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows

This mounted the Windows filesystem on the hard disk represented by device /dev/sda1 in the folder /mnt/windows. If your hard disk has more than a single partition, it may be a different device that you'll need. I was able to find a tool from the task bar menus which allowed me to identify which device I needed, but damned if I can find it now at home. Possibly it's not on the Gnome menus on Fedora 8, which is what I'm using at home.

Can anyone help further?

Re: Backing up Windows from Linux

[graydon]

Well, yes, but I shouldn't.

Root commands in unixes assume that you a)know exactly what you are doing and b)have your feet backed up somewhere, because you're dancing a jig in a minefield.

While "learn by doing" definitely applies, learn by doing while you're trying to recover critical data is... less than optimal, shall we say? It's a much better idea to get someone who actually knows what they're doing to show you/do it for you than to try to figure out what you're doing while not losing your data.

(Fedora, for example, uses udev, which means that the device files (the /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb2, etc. that correspond to physical hardware) can move around between boots; this is why you use disk labels rather than device files as mount identifiers in udev systems. Someone who doesn't know that can get themselves into a right muddle.)

Re: Backing up Windows from Linux

[(Anonymous)]

*Root commands in unixes assume that you a)know exactly what you are doing and b)have your feet backed up somewhere, because you're dancing a jig in a minefield.

While "learn by doing" definitely applies, learn by doing while you're trying to recover critical data is... less than optimal, shall we say?*

What wonderful phraseology.

Southernwood

[simont]

I can't identify the GUI tool you might have been thinking of, but typing "fdisk -l" at a command prompt is likely to be a good way to identify the right disk partition.

[lethargic_man]

Having now booted up Fedora 10 Live again (I shall be using the same method to fix another friend's computer this evening), I can now report (FWIW, if anyone ever tries to use the advice here) that the tool is the Logical Volume Management tool, which is present on the System -> Administration menu on Fedora 10.

[simont]

Also, I'd recommend adding "-r" to that mount command, on the general principle that it helps to avoid the risk of accidentally modifying the filesystem.

Re: Backing up Windows from Linux

[(Anonymous)]

hello yourself, I hope you are well.

I'm afraid I didn't quite understand your post. what does:
"mount the Windows hard drive manually automatically" mean?
what is it to mount a file system?
and what is it to represent something by a device?
I'm pretty certain that the laptop in question does not have more than a single partition, so maybe that doesn't matter.

Also, where do I get hold of a Linux DVD from? do I just download onto my hard drive and burn onto a DVD?

hope your new job is going well.

Re: Backing up Windows from Linux

[lethargic_man]

I'm afraid I didn't quite understand your post. what does:
"mount the Windows hard drive manually automatically" mean?
what is it to mount a file system?

Mounted filesystems in *nix are filesystems the OS knows about. So when, say, inserting a CD-ROM, the OS will make it available as part of the normal file hierarchy: mounting it automatically.

The Linux Live DVDs we are referring to here run the entire operating system off the DVD. When running them (or Fedora 10 at any rate) only the DVD filesystem is mounted; the Windows filesystem on the hard disk is not; so when you run Nautilus (the Gnome equivalent of Windows Explorer) you won't see anything on the hard disk; only on the DVD. The instructions I gave above are how to mount the hard disk on the filesystem.

and what is it to represent something by a device?

*nix has a folder of special files representing devices, including potentially present hard disks, DVDs and floppies. When mounting a drive, you have to specify both a mount point (an empty folder to attach the drive's filesystem to) and the device corresponding to the relevant device).

Also, where do I get hold of a Linux DVD from? do I just download onto my hard drive and burn onto a DVD?

Download Fedora 11 Live CD as an ISO image from here and follow the instructions here for burning it to a CD-ROM or DVD.

HTH.

Re: Backing up Windows from Linux

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you very much HTH.

That now makes more sense to me. The question is how much damage can I do?
I take it the theory is that I load linux from the DVD and then mount (as you put it) the hard disc, cunningly locate the C-Drive and take all the vital data off it and then reload windows and restore the data.
I suppose the danger occurs when I am trying to mount the hard disc because I have no idea what any of those commands mean. If I add a "/r" to your commands as suggested above, will it make everything safe?

Love, me

[liv]

Um, I hate to say this, since you are trying to be helpful here, but you are behaving exactly like the geek stereotype: newbie asks for help with a Windows problem, gets the response "switch to Linux and do [long list of arcane operations]." I mean, ok, you're not being a supercilious geek, you are willing to clarify further when your suggestions are meaningless to the person who needs the help. But I am with graydon here, this is not the moment to be proselytizing for Linux!

[lethargic_man]

I'm doing no such thing. I am clarifying simont's suggestion of using a Linux Live CD by providing concrete instructions on how to do so; neither of us would have suggested this if fixing the problem from within Windows had been an option.

You can take your choices: Personally I would be happier pursuing a solution that involved typing in commands in an unknown operating system than unscrewing the lid, removing the hard disk, and then trying to access the files off it; YMMV.

yet another problem

[(Anonymous)]

I am sure your wall board of my problems but now I have a new one. (You also going to have to accept some typos because I'm talking to my computer and this is the second time I've attempted to write this posed).

I thought to myself I need to back up my own data so I'm going to get myself an external hard drive. When I was in the shop the sales assistant persuaded me that it was not very difficult to remove a hard drive with a screwdriver so I bought a separate hard drive and Mount thinking that if I was lucky amount would be compatible with the corrupted hard drive. Of course it wasn't. However, I can't get Windows to recognize my new external hard drive so that I can format it. It claims to have initialised it but it still won't see it. Anyone got any bright ideas? Also, the sales assistant suggested that I could download a program called "mini Pe" and that this would boot Windows and allow me to get at the data. Anybody come across such a miracle programme? It seems a bit easier than fiddling with Linux (although I have learnt awful lot from the above posts, thank you very much)

Love,
me

Re: yet another problem

[verazea]

It's difficult to understand what the problem might be without knowing what you've done or what the error is.

Does this disk show up in the logical disk manager? (control panel -> administrative tools (you might need to go into performance and maintenance to see this if you are in the control panel category view) -> computer management -> disk management -> storage)

If it shows up but it is all unallocated, this could cause this and you need to partition the disk. To do so, right click on the unallocated space bit, select new partition,then you probably want primary partition. Set how big you want it (you can make the entire disk one partition if you want) and then format it. You'll have to use NTFS if the partition is over 32gb in size (microsoft crippled the format tool so fat32 won't format successfully above that size).

[verazea]

Fixboot shouldn't wipe data. Neither should fixmbr, but anything modifying disc structure is potentially dangerous. I'd try fixboot first to see if that helps, and if it doesn't fixmbr and fixboot.

If you will can't get it to work, there is a non Linux live disk way to reinstall windows in a safer way, but which still involves typing mysterious commands - I had to do something like this when I didn't have any way of booting into *nix to rescue a system. Really, I'd not recommend a someone not confident in their abilities does this but any port in a storm...

Assuming windows is in a directory called windows, something like this in the recovery console (completely untested and might need changes, but only the last command does anything dangerous - the commands change the permissions of the windows folder to make it a normal non system/read only folder and then renames the windows folder so reinstalling Windows won't overwrite it):

cd \
attrib -r -s -h windows
ren windows windows-backup

and then reinstalling Windows (making sure you don't format!) and your old windows folder will still be available. It will still give you a new pro file (but the old data is still there and you can copy it after install). You will also need to reinstall all your software...

If the same attrib and rename could be done on program files and the folder containing the user files (often Documents and Settings or Profiles) so they too are backed up before reinstalling Windows, that would be even better but I remember it not letting me no matter what I tried.