Windows wont boot

[jayanath]

Windows has been acting strangely... (slowing down and lots of other problems)

I googled it and the symptomps matched to a problem with the hard drive... I was suggested to run chkdisk... I had to schedule it for the next time I reboot. The next day windows froze on chkdisk and I had to press the reset button..

After that windows wouldn't boot... It said something like "Windows could not boot because of a missing file", Which btw is not the first time that happened. So if I repair or reinstall windows I'll probably write over the files that I need to back up. They are unfortunately stuck at My Documents.

I googled for solutions in a hurry and came across Knoppix... I downloaded the iso and Knoppix wouldn't boot So I downloaded "Ubuntu"... I got ubuntu to work and found a way to get around not being able to access the hard drives using a diskmounter..

Unfortunately I only had access to read the hard disks and could not write to them.. So i couldn't get my files out (something to do with NTFS partitions and Linux).

So now I'm stuck with Ubuntu and can't get my files. Can anyone give me a noob guide to enable Write support for my drives. I don't have a portable hard drive either.

I'm running on Ubuntu Gnome 2.24.1.. If I'm rite. I tried to boot an older version of Ubuntu but wouldn't boot.

Sorry for any typos and the long descriptions Any help appreciated. Trying Linux was just an experiment I have no idea of what I'm doing with the terminal until its over... Lucky I'm running a Live CD

Thanks

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Read-only access should let you copy the data off onto another drive... Unless it says you can't even access them.

Then you would have to go edit your fstab file. Try plain copying first.

 

[jayanath]

I forgot to mention that I tried that. That's when I found out that all my drives are read only

 

[jayanath]

No idea how to edit the fstab file either. Sorry first time that i even saw what Linux looks like

 

[Kingbee13]

if you have read access (depending on how large the needed data is) can you not copy it over to a flash drive or an external usb drive that Ubuntu can write to (fat32 for example)?

 

[jayanath]

i hav a four gig flash but the there's too many gbs of data for that to work and my vista laptop's hard is also full

 

[Kingbee13]

if your drive is physically sound and your partition is healthy you might try running something like spinrite to check the drive, and then reinstall windows without formatting the drive, if your harddrive is actually dying your going to need a replacement and in that case I'd just install a new drive install windows on that and then save the data

if your system was running Vista, the install disc also has a repair windows function that worked for me when some nvidia raid drivers (I thoguht) had killed about a terabyte of data on my system

never had much luck in using similar functions with XP

the last thing I can think of is using the Linux live CD to burn the data to backups, not sure if it has this capability on the live distro or not but worth looking into

Edit: of course getting an external USB harddrive is also an option, not only to rescue your data now but to back it up in the future, just depending on how improtant said data is to you versus the cost of an external drive

 

[jayanath]

The drive seems fine because i can access the files from Ubuntu. I have a secondary hard drive (500gb). My plan was to initially get the files from my C:\ into the 500gig drive but that is also read only.

Anyone knows how to fix the NTFS write problem. It'd be great if i can fix it cuz with the exception of this problem Ubuntu seems better. I'm was running XP before not vista but the setup is a bit confusing because i need the my documents folder and i can't afford to format the other partitions either.

I'll have to get an external drive at somepoint but I'm trying to fix this problem the cheap way.

 

[Kingbee13]

well if you reinstall XP to the drive in question without formating it your data will still be there, so you shouldnt even need ot use linux at all but..

my knowlege of Linux is quite limited so somone else here could proabably help you to make NTFS read and writable under Ubuntu but NTFS-3G Stable Read/Write Driver might help

 

[mc866]

Have you tried putting your XP disc in and doing a repair? As long as you don't reformat a repair will not overwrite or erase any of your data, it will just rewrite some of the missing boot files so you can get back into XP. I would give that a try first. If that doesn't work you have other options such as pulling the drive from the computer and hooking it up to another PC via USB and moving the data that way.

 

[jayanath]

I'll try the repair option but the thing is i have the Service Pack 3 CD but SP2 was installed on the drive. Will that do anything messed up?
I just wanted to try Linux for my self. I'll try to get that NTFS 3G driver to work but have no idea how to. Does anyone know how to do that?

 

[AnonymouseUser]

Sounds like your NTFS partition might be locked due to the improper shutdown. Have you tried booting into safe mode? Can you run chkdisk from the SP3 disk?

 

[ManyBeers]

Try the SystemRescueCD and burn it to a cd.
I used this disc to access my Ubuntu and Windows partitions when I needed to. It has built in read/write support for NTFS. When you get to a point where you must select your GUI option type in......wizard..... and that will give you a minimal linux desktop. Use Gparted to
do your operations. Make sure to mount the partition you intend to work on.Gparted can mount them using it's menu options. When you leave the Gui(I think it is either Quit or Return to console) and are at the prompt-- I just type in....shutdown now.....because that is the only Linux shutdown command I know. LOL

 

[jayanath]

Ok... I was trying to repair Windows XP with the repair console and a guide I found from google... That didnt fix the problem and after that I got a BSOD during booting... I tried booting from Last Known Configuration a bit before that. And i think thats what did the trick.

After the BSOD i gave up on repair and was about to try the NTFS driver on ubuntu again... I was feeling lucky so i tried to open the drives from Computer again and the first time i tried it it said that the drive couldn't mount. But at the same time a shortcut appeared on the desktop for the drive so i tried opening the drives again. And it worked. I did the same for the rest of the drives and got my files backed up from C:\ to the 500gig drive.

Now all i have to do is that windows will install properly But I feel like keeping Ubuntu.. I'll try installing it to the hd instead of Live CD over the weekend.

Thanks for your help. Will let you guys know how XP goes.

Thanks AnonymouseUser. Oh yea and i did run CHKDISK from the SP3 setup and it said there was one error..