Knoppix hanging - can't get it loaded

[jpaviles]

I have no experience at all with Knoppix. It was suggested to use this to
try to get to a harddrive that Windows won't boot up.

I have run Spinrite on it with no success.. Some how my partition is no longer named so I'm not
sure if this is going to work. FIXMBR and FIXBOOT don't work..

Here's what I tried:

knoppix vga=0
knoppix acpi=off pnpbios=off noapic noapm
knoppix vga=0 debug -b 3
failsafe debug -b 3

All of them hang in the same exact place:

Found primary Knoppix compressed image at /cdrom/Knoppix/Knoppix

I downloaded version 5.0.1

Are there any other options I can try?

My laptop is a compaq Presario M2010US

TIA

[Harry Kuhman]

This sounds more like a problem from a bad download or burn than a hardware issue. Did you check and confirm the md5 sum of the download before burning? Did you burn at low speed? If yes to both of these try booting in failsafe mode to see if it really is a hardware issue. And try knoppix 2 to see if it's a gui issue.

Opps - just saw that you did try failsafe, although I'm not sure why you added the debug stuff. This really makes me think it's a disc issue of some sort.

[jpaviles]

I downloaded again.. I'm not quite sure how to check the md5 sum. I downloaded winmd5sum but do I right click on the md5 file or the iso file?

Just noticed that I have been downloading the DVD when I only have a CD burner
Going to try to down load once again..

TIA

[mjdc76]

You run winmd5sum against the downloaded iso. This will give you a long string of characters as an output, which is a hash of the iso image.

Then COMPARE the output of winmd5sum to the VALUE thatts in the MD5 file that comes with the distribution. If they match, you correctly downloaded the file. If not, your iso file is corrupt.

Basically, the .md5 file from the distribution is just a text file with the "right answer" in it.

Mike

[Harry Kuhman]

I downloaded again.. I'm not quite sure how to check the md5 sum.
See answer #1 (http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/User:Harry_Kuhman) for this and several other things that you need to know.

[jpaviles]

YEAH!!!

I'm in... This is a miracle. I have been at this for 3 months now trying to get into this harddrive.. I see all of my files.

Of course, I've hit the next road block.

I need to get all this data off .. 40GB (not a full hd and not all data), but ..

I have a 300gb external hd that appears to be NTFS and from what I've tried and read. I can't write to this..

I do have a 2.2gb usb flash drive that is fat32... so it's going to be a very long nite copying data piece by piece..

Is there anyway to partition a part of the external hd as fat32 so I can copy the whole drive?

[Harry Kuhman]

Follow the link in my previous post and read answer #5.

Sure, if you don't need what's on the drive in the NTFS partition(s) you can reformat it to FAT32. It can even be done in Knoppix, but I would suggest using Windows or even a DOS disk to do it if you are more comfortable with partitioning there (I sure am so I'm not going to try talking you through a Knoppix reformat).