OT: Computer help - Boot Disk Guru?

[DanDombrowski]

Alright guys,

I have a friend that done messed up his PeeCee. Ran Ad-Aware, removed lots of ****, and now when you click the name to log-on at the log on screen, it immediately logs on and then logs back off and brings you back to the screen. It has windows XP, I do not know if it is home or professional edition.

Now, I need to get the data off the drive. Were it a tower, I'd just pull the drive and copy off the contents, but its a laptop. I know that there are many ways to do this, but what do you think the EASIEST way to get the data off the drive is?

My first attempt is going to be to boot into safe mode and try to log on with administrator, but I don't know the password, and chances are he doesn't either.

My second idea is some kind of boot disk that will allow me to read the hard disk and communicate with the network so I can transfer it all off, but I have no idea what boot disk would be the best for this? Any specific version of Linux that will read an NTFS partition and get me on the network?

Should I just try to run a windows recovery installation from the CD? If its Windows XP home, that might be a problem considering I don't have a 'home' disk, only professional.

Anyway, thanks for reading this, and thanks to anyone that responds.

[rickm]

Hit F8 at boot, go into "Safe Mode", then do a system restore to a previous point.

I had someone bring me a laptop last week, he couldn't wait for me to resolve a few issues so he tried deleting things out of the registry...and totally boned the thing. System restore won't work, nothing will. To get the data from that one I'm going to have to pull the HD, drop it in my PC, then copy it all. This one is going to cost him a bit. :P

[ryan roopnarine]

windows 2000 lets you redo passwords when you reinstall it over an existing w2k installation, i'd think/hope xp lets you do the same. someone stole mine, otherwise i'd give it to you----there's a little adaptor that you can buy that you can use to hook a laptop IDE plug to a regular computer one. i don't remember it costing that much, but if you are angling for "free", reinstalling xp might be the way to do it. i haven't had too much luck using USB in dos, otherwise you could try that way.


Alright guys,

I have a friend that done messed up his PeeCee. Ran Ad-Aware, removed lots of ****, and now when you click the name to log-on at the log on screen, it immediately logs on and then logs back off and brings you back to the screen. It has windows XP, I do not know if it is home or professional edition.

Now, I need to get the data off the drive. Were it a tower, I'd just pull the drive and copy off the contents, but its a laptop. I know that there are many ways to do this, but what do you think the EASIEST way to get the data off the drive is?

My first attempt is going to be to boot into safe mode and try to log on with administrator, but I don't know the password, and chances are he doesn't either.

My second idea is some kind of boot disk that will allow me to read the hard disk and communicate with the network so I can transfer it all off, but I have no idea what boot disk would be the best for this? Any specific version of Linux that will read an NTFS partition and get me on the network?

Should I just try to run a windows recovery installation from the CD? If its Windows XP home, that might be a problem considering I don't have a 'home' disk, only professional.

Anyway, thanks for reading this, and thanks to anyone that responds.

[rickm]

Those 2.5 to 3.5 adapters are under 4.00 each, computergeeks.com has 'em.

[DanDombrowski]

Safe mode is going to be my first attempt once I get the thing tonight, obviously, but if the main account doesn't work, I'm not going to have the administrator passwords, so I wont be able to get in to do the system restore.

I suppose that I could re-install windows over the existing installation, but I wanted to get the data off before I started screwing with it, because I have this really cool power where all I have to do is LOOK at a computer and I can make data corrupt after reinstallations. Since its someone else's computer, I'm trying to be real careful about it.

On a related note, I burned a copy of "damn small linux" on a CD, and it can read NTFS partitions and view windows shared folders, so I can extract his **** that way if need be. OS operates entirely from the CD rom, just let it boot and do your stuff. Pretty cool.

I try to avoid taking laptop hard drives out for the same reason - all I have to do is look at it and it corrupts or wont read or I'll break something else.

Thanks for your help guys.

[ryan roopnarine]

um, how do you plan on getting his data off in linux? does it have a cdrw drive that will work there? thankfully, when my laptop grenaded its HDD, it would operate intermittently so that i could hook the burner off and get my stuff......unless he has data that can be moved off on floppy discs...

[DanDombrowski]

linux can read and write to windows shares- uses a program called samba. Chugging along as I type.

[ryan roopnarine]

linux can read and write to windows shares- uses a program called samba. Chugging along as I type.

i know linux can read/write it. i'm just wondering what the hardware support for a laptop cdrw or other media would be.

[smcgowan]

First try no Password for the Administrator account. Works most of the time on non-corporate PC's..

Next try this . It works to reset the PW.

http://www.securityhorizon.com/security_whitepapers/archived/ntdisk.html

[DanDombrowski]

its really no different than a normal CDRW, which it has support for. It even recognized the USB DVD burner I have. Could write to USB pen drives too.