Using Knoppix to boot Win XP

[winxpuser50]

My Win XP Service Pack 3 OS stopped booting two days ago and I looked and looked for a Win XP reboot software/utility on physical CD (since I don't like downloading from sites or burning CD's). After a LOT of searching I finally decided to purchase a Knoppix CD and I hope it will at least reboot my computer so I can look at the files or backup the files to my external hd. If there's anyone else here who is also a Win XP user who has successfully done this, I'd love to hear how it went, any problems, etc. My hard drive is not partitioned and as far as I know is a single standard drive, running on a Toshiba laptop. My laptop came with a "recovery" disc which I thought was a boot disc but NO, it would have wiped out everything I haven't backed up. I didn't want that. I realize Knoppix may not be able to fix errors but I just want to get back into my system and look at it so I can start the process of putting it back into proper boot mode. Thanks, I hope to hear from anyone who has similar problems or ideas to share on this....

[winxpuser50]

I hope I'm not intruding but I'm new to Knoppix, just had my Win XP system fail to boot, nothing worked, (safe mode, all the usual fixes) so I just today bought a CD of Knoppix and hope it will get me into my system and past the boot problem. Obviously a file(s) is corrupted. I looked a various boot utilities that claim to do this and that but several tech people advised me to try Knoppix as perhaps I can transfer my files to my external drive before working on the system further or heaven forbid having to do a full restore using the Toshiba "recovery" disc (which I thought was a reboot disc, but nooooooooooo ,it wipes the whole system). I'll also keep Hiren's Boot CD in mind if Knoppix doesn't work....I want to be able to fix what's wrong but not sure if Knoppix will let me do that....I'm not a total newb but never tried anything like this so I'm out there if anyone wants to share problems or issues. Thanks!

[krishna.murphy]

I hope I'm not intruding but I'm new to Knoppix, just had my Win XP system fail to boot, nothing worked, (safe mode, all the usual fixes) so I just today bought a CD of Knoppix and hope it will get me into my system and past the boot problem. Obviously a file(s) is corrupted. I looked a various boot utilities that claim to do this and that but several tech people advised me to try Knoppix as perhaps I can transfer my files to my external drive before working on the system further or heaven forbid having to do a full restore using the Toshiba "recovery" disc (which I thought was a reboot disc, but nooooooooooo ,it wipes the whole system). I'll also keep Hiren's Boot CD in mind if Knoppix doesn't work....I want to be able to fix what's wrong but not sure if Knoppix will let me do that....I'm not a total newb but never tried anything like this so I'm out there if anyone wants to share problems or issues. Thanks!

Welcome aboard! Knoppix can certainly help you back up in many cases - a well-advised first step on the road to repair. Have you tried booting it yet? Keep in mind that you may need to change a BIOS setting to get the CD/DVD to boot, regardless of what it has on it.

The file manager (big file folder icon on the toolbar, bottom left side) can help you mount both your original hard drive and a USB disk/flash drive, then copy what you want to your external drive (or even the web.) One thing that's kind-o' different here is that Windows will generally auto-mount any drive in sight, while Knoppix, and Linux in general, will wait to be told to mount in most cases.

Copy-and-paste is much the same in both systems, so no worries there. Now, what to do with the busted Windows partition? Depends on what you find. Let us know if you need help.

Hope this helps!
Krishna

[winxpuser50]

thanks so much for the support and advice....I ordered the cd about 3 days ago so am waiting for it to come in the mail. Hopefully it's a good burn (I've noticed a lot of people who have tried to burn their own cd and it's a bad burn or other glitches) so from that angle, I hope the cd itself runs okay. I will definitely let you know how it turns out....I'm stressing a lot over this as I have so much that i don't want to lose off the drive and am in a time crunch, but knoppix does seem to be a good first step. I may run into problems with changing the bios to boot from the cd first, but will handle that when i get to it. for now, just waiting on the cd arrival in regular mail. thanks again, if this $3.95 disc works it'll be a godsend vs. more expensive "recovery" software I've seen out there....

[Harry Kuhman]

...I've noticed a lot of people who have tried to burn their own cd and it's a bad burn or other glitches) so from that angle, I hope the cd itself runs okay.........I'm stressing a lot over this as I have so much that i don't want to lose off the drive and am in a time crunch,......

While many people don't follow instructions and make bad discs, problems can generally be avoided by some simple steps: check the md5 checksum of the iso before burning. Burn at low speed (I suggest 4x and never use more than 8x for CDs or 4x for DVDs), burn the iso properly "as an image" and use burning software that has the option to do a verification pass (such as Nero) and turn that option on.

The low speed burn is important and I have concern that most resellers may not be doing low speed burns. If you really have a time crunch then I suggest doing your own burn. At least that way in the unlikely event that there is a problem (and there is always a small chance of a problem with the media, no matter if you did the burn or placed an order), you will be set up to try again right away.

What you do with Knoppix after you get it is another issue. I urge people to use it to recover files from NTFS or FAT partitions, but never to trust it to write to a NTFS partition.

[winxpuser50]

Unfortunately when I received my Knoppix CD in the mail today, I tried it and it didn't work. I talked about this in another thread as well, so don't want to be repetitious, but no matter what I tried, it wouldn't work. I set the bios to boot with the CD first, but it just ignored that and the same screens came up as before, showing "unmountable boot volume" in the blue screen which was the same error message. I discussed this on a forum at CNET and someone there said that some systems can't read from recordable discs...not sure what that means, but it would never work for me. Really discouraged about this, as I now have no other choice but to pull the drive, buy a new drive and transfer the data from one to the other which I was hoping to avoid.

I feel the disc might be at fault, and not my cd or my drive/system ....as you indicate, even a purchased CD might have been burned incorrectly and is not readable by my system. I wiped a few smudges off the disk, nothing big, so i doubt that's it. It's as if my system simply doesn't recognize the CD. I set the bios to boot from CD, and I can hear the CD starting to run but it never launches the program ....just proceeds into the usual screen I had before til
it goes to the blue screen and the whole reboot process starts over again. My CD drive is working because it was able to read/detect the Toshiba recovery disc that I had originally thought was a boot disc before getting the warning on it not to use it or it would wipe my files if they hadn't been backed up. If my cd drive was bad, it wouldn't have loaded the image file on that or recognized it, but it did. So, I really don't think it's a malfunction of my cd. I think there's some problem with the disc itself.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to burn a CD myself, since I don't have a second computer available and I don't want to use a friend's system,as they've had people mess up their settings before and just don't want anyone else using their stuff, which I respect. But that leaves me high and dry as far as making a Win XP boot disk or my own Knoppix CD or anything. If there's anything else I can do to make the Knoppix disc work before I pull my drive, etc. more feed back would be appreciated. Thank you so much!

[krishna.murphy]

Well, perhaps it might be best to start with simply inserting (without booting) the Knoppix disk in a working system - it might not be readable at all, or it might be fine in another drive. I assume you're unable to try the hint I gave before, regarding using an external CD drive, as well as booting on another system. The best option I see is to use that friend's system to download, verify, and burn another disk entirely (as suggested previously.)

If you're going to spend $$ as you suggest, why spend it on a hard drive replacement that is most likely unneeded? Most Windoze "blue-screen" failures have nothing to do with the physical integrity of the hardware, but rather the unstable nature of the OS itself - which is why "Windows repair" is such a frequent cause for people seeking out Knoppix. I suggest that such funds might be better invested in a flash memory, which can be used to at least hold files recovered by whatever method available, even if not made bootable by Knoppix (bootable Knoppix flash drives are available, too - click here for one source.)

Hope That helps!
Krishna
p.s. Note that there is a chance that your troubles started with a virus, which would most likely still be present on the hard drive, if so. Some viruses have even been known to cause physical drive damage in certain cases! I recommend using a virus scanner on the contents of any "rescued" files to prevent further difficulties.