Using Kn as recovery/boot, total newbie. Need help!

[KathiSharpe]

OK. You guys need to keep two things in mind, in talking with me.

#1 - I know a thing or two about computers. But I don't know a thing or three. This makes me very, very dangerous. I won't be at all insulted if you switch to "for dummies" mode (tho I really don't like someone being a jerk because sometimes I can be a bit thick )

#2 - I have never, ever, ever used linux. I used a unix-based internet provider back in 1994? 95? for a year or three, and had to type commands for a few things. If it's similar, some things might come back. If it's not. ahh well. I'll learn a new thing.

Here's my situation. Norton Internet Security apparently did what the AV portion was designed to do and deleted windows/system32/config/system - which is apparently a rather essential registry bit. The fact that the "Security" portion did not keep me very secure led the good Symantec folks to issue me a full refund of my money. (aside: looking for good AV/firewall recommendations, please pm)

With this file missing, Win XP Home SP2 cannot boot. I cannot whip out my handy Windoze CDs to reinstall, because I don't have them. My laptop came with RESTORE disks. Toshiba gave me terrible advice (just copy the missing file from someone else's computer.....duhhhh.... you CAN'T ) and I've wasted two days trying to track down a solution.

A guy on the MS newsgroup recommended knoppix as a potential solution. If I can boot the computer from knoppix, then I can access the files I need to back up, and either email, or offload to a thumb drive, or even set up a network to another computer. Then I can go ahead and just reformat the hard drive, start from scratch.

That said -

Problem # 1 - I spent the afternoon DLing knoppix (even on dsl, it's slow!). I have a 700mb disk, and it won't fit. I thought I saw something in the FAQ but I can't find it now. Is there a way to do it?

#2 - I don't get what to do with the other two files. PGP has always seemed rather mysterious.... yipes.

#3 - I've been reading this article (Computer First Aid) and I think I get most of it (Surprising. Maybe dangerous. :P ) I think that I understand, from the knoppix documentation and the article, that Kn comes WITH the web browsers and free email programs? I'm thinking that will be the easiest way to take care of things, zip and send to my gmail account.

Can you think of anything else I will need to know? Is there anything I haven't told you, that you need to know?

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Harry Kuhman]

Problem # 1 - I spent the afternoon DLing knoppix (even on dsl, it's slow!). I have a 700mb disk, and it won't fit.

Assuming that you downloaded the CD version and not the new unauthorized DVD version, and that you either got it from BitTorrent, or from one of the official mirrors found by the Get Knoppix link above and then checked it's md5 sum and confirmed the download was good, you are wrong about the size. If you have not or will not checked the md5 sum you are likely still wrong, but I'm not going to spend any time on that. Follow the Documentation link at the top of this page and read the Downloading faq.

#2 - I don't get what to do with the other two files. PGP has always seemed rather mysterious.... yipes.

Sounds like you did use a mirror (BitTorrent delivers more that just 2 additional files). If you downloaded a pgp signature you can use it to verify that the file was posted by who you think it was posted by. If you don't use PGP then you can skip this step if you wish. But do not skip the md5 step above. If one of the "other 2 files" you got was not an md5 file go back and get it, then read item 3 in the faq mentioned above.

#3 - I've been reading this article (Computer First Aid) and I think I get most of it (Surprising. Maybe dangerous. :P ) I think that I understand, from the knoppix documentation and the article, that Kn comes WITH the web browsers and free email programs? I'm thinking that will be the easiest way to take care of things, zip and send to my gmail account.

Can you think of anything else I will need to know? Is there anything I haven't told you, that you need to know?

You need to know to burn the ISO files (after that all important md5 check) as an image, not to just drag and drop it into the file area, not to select any option in your burning software that makes the CD bootable, and to burn it slowly (4x or as slow as your burner will let you if you can't do 4x). How to burn as an image depends on your burning software, which you did not mention.

(aside: looking for good AV/firewall recommendations, please pm)

I generally don't give advice over pm since it will help only one person rather than others who might read it in the forums. And it doesn't give anyone a chance to point out if I'm wrong. For a virus scanner I use and like AVG free. On occasion the newest viruses do take a little while to get to it, but they seem to do updates almost daily lately and it does a nice job. I only use it to scan files I don't trust, or to scan my entire system now and then, and never let any scanner insert itself to read all my mail or intercept all of my downloads, so I can't comment on those features, but they are they if anyone actually wants them.

For a Spyware scanner I like Ad-Aware Personal.

For a firewall I like Kerio. I don't really like the newer versions of Kerio, I think they have too many supposedly user friendly features that have nothing to do with being a firewall, like scanning all exes when you run them to verify the checksum, even if the exe does not access the network. I stick with an older version of Kerio that scans only files after they attempt to get past the firewall, or even with versions 2.14 or 2.15 of Tiny Personal Firewall (by the same team that did Kerio). You might like the new version of Kerio, some people do, but the scan of all applications in my mind makes things less secure because it's less apparent to the average user if any particular application acceses the network.

Never trust the firewall that is built into XP. Disable it.

All of the above are free. You may have problems finding an older version of Kerio, if you want one and can't find it, send me a pm.

Harry

[UnderScore]

Welcome to Knoppix.net. Sorry to hear about Norton eating WinXP.
If all goes well you should be able to boot from a Knoppix CDR and then access the local drives to copy/email data off of it.

A review of Knoppix to get a general overview http://www.linuxforums.org/news/article-24309.html
The General FAQs http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/General_FAQ
The Downloading & Burning FAQs http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Downloading_FAQ

I have a 700mb disk, and it won't fit. I thought I saw something in the FAQ but I can't find it now. Is there a way to do it?

You will need a 700MB/80minute CDR disc. If you do not have one then, yes it will not fit. If you do and you are concerned that your 700MB download won't fit, I can assure you that it will fit when the ISO is properly burned an an image to the CDR. Please read the FAQs & if necessary post detailed questions.

[KathiSharpe]

Assuming that you downloaded the CD version and not the new unauthorized DVD version

Not that I'd know the difference - but I got it from following links from here.

and that you either got it from BitTorrent, or from one of the official mirrors found by the Get Knoppix link above

I'm not real sure what BitTorrent is but the word "mirror" sounds kind of familiar. Actually none of the US sites would work - the download wouldn't start - so I tried a UK site and it started right up. Given the time of day (late afternoon) I thought it might be that many in the UK had gone home for the evening.

and then checked it's md5 sum and confirmed the download was good, you are wrong about the size. If you have not or will not checked the md5 sum you are likely still wrong, but I'm not going to spend any time on that. Follow the Documentation link at the top of this page and read the Downloading faq.

OK now see... I told you. I'm dumb, and dangerous.

That was what my ? regarding the other two files is about. I caught that the download FAQ was discussing them - and that you're supposed to type ... something... somewhere... but, where? The md5 file seemed to be text. The FAQ is well written but it's not written for people who've never looked at this stuff before

And I wouldn't know how to do pgp if my life depended on it. If it did, I suppose I'd call a friend who deals in such things. If I get something critical or questionable in my line of work I pick up the phone and call about it...

You need to know to burn the ISO files (after that all important md5 check) as an image, not to just drag and drop it into the file area, not to select any option in your burning software that makes the CD bootable, and to burn it slowly (4x or as slow as your burner will let you if you can't do 4x). How to burn as an image depends on your burning software, which you did not mention.

Sighs. The CD software on Ken's computer is ... sad. I'd call it pathetic but I've seen worse. After poking around a bit here in the forum last night I saw that someone had recommended Nero, so I found that. I can't get it to work. I think I"m doing something wrong, so I'm poking about on their site now.

(aside: looking for good AV/firewall recommendations, please pm)

I generally don't give advice over pm since it will help only one person rather than others who might read it in the forums. And it doesn't give anyone a chance to point out if I'm wrong.[/quote]

I wasn't sure what the forum policy was about side-tracking threads. In my forum we do it but gently steer things (sort of like herding cats in a hurricane), I've seen other forums that are topic, topic, nothing BUT the topic.

For a virus scanner I use and like AVG free.

Well... here's my story. I had Norton AV for a year, when the renewal date came I decided to try something free. So I uninstalled it and set up AVG and Zone alarm, at the recommendation of a # of people on my forum. Within 24 hours, I had spyware and a couple of virii crawling all over the place.

For a Spyware scanner I like Ad-Aware Personal.

I agree, they're good.

For a firewall I like Kerio.

Never heard of them - will check it out.

Never trust the firewall that is built into XP. Disable it.

Oh yes - even I knew that. Might not know a checksum from checked baggage... :::exits stage left in a HURRY:::

In all seriousness, thank you. I do want to do this and do it right - so if you can tell me what to do, I'd appreciate it. If I need to redownload from bittorrent, I can.... or if I can do what needs done with what I got from the UK site, that's good. I really don't know what to do with that md5whodinger... just tell me what to type, where, and I'll do it (if it's essential to the process, why wouldn't someone do it )

Thanks

All of the above are free. You may have problems finding an older version of Kerio, if you want one and can't find it, send me a pm.

Harry[/quote]

[KathiSharpe]

WOOOOOHOOOOOO!

I figured out how to burn the CD using the software that Ken's computer has. I could never get Nero to work (and I still think that's something I'm doing wrong, I've nothing against Nero). So I went poking around. It's Roxio, by the way - the software he's got - I poked and picked and found something unintelligible, but it had the word "image" in it. So I clicked that and it took me to a screen that let me pick the file, and select the 4X speed thingie. I figured it couldn't hurt to try. 20 minutes and some swearing about "I DON'T KNOW" (regarding ethernet things) later... here I am!

I couldn't get my linksys wireless card to work. Had NO clue what to select. But I was able to plug the ethernet in and make some educated guesses (again figuring "the thing's already broke, I can only blow it up worse"...


So. I still haven't done the md5 thing. :::blushes PROFUSELY::: If someone can tell me what on earth to do, I will joyfully do that!

I'm going to see if this thing has a zip utility, and then spend an awful lot of time uploading!!

I have to say... I'm VERY VERY happy at the moment. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!

[KathiSharpe]

Um.

I can upload my files one at a time to my gmail account (got that far).

I discovered that if I right-click, a utility called "Ark" is offered, with the option to zip the files. However, when I try to do so, I'm told via error message that I cannot, as the files are "read only".

If anyone's about on the holiday, could you please let me know if there are any options? This is going to be *tedious*.

Thanks

[rusty]

Hi,


You might try getting on the irc , #KNOPPIX, channel for real time help. Knoppix comes with a instant messenger client, GAIM. Go to K-> internet -> gaim internet messenger. Click on accounts, choose irc and give yourself a nickname. click the online box. Click on chat and enter #KNOPPIX for the channel. Someone there will likely be able to help step by step.

good luck.

[Harry Kuhman]

I'll try to cover a number of things here:

On PGP, it's safe to skip it.

On what file you got. We still don't know, not even what version you have. There have been a lot of links thrown out on the boards recently, as well as the links to the official missors and BitTorrent found from the get Knoppix link at the top of the page. It sounds like you finally got it to burn, so you must have had a CD version and indeed the ISO fit on a CD. We could have talked you through how to burn if you had mentioned Roxio, but at least you found it now. It would have been much better if rather than the statement about finding the link here you just had given us the actual full file name that you had, and maybe even the URL of where you download it.

On md5 sums: There are many programs that will check md5 sums for you. If you already have a recent version of Quickpar installed on you system, that will do it and you don't need any other tool. A tool I like to use that deals exclusively with md5 sums is md5summer. You can download it and use the little file ending in m5d that you hopefully got when you got the ISO to check the validity of the ISO. If your copy of Knoppix seems to be working well then you likely got a good download this time, but checking the md5 sum is an important skill to develop for the future. No harm, of course, can come from confirming your ISO now if you didn't already delete the ISO file.

On BitTorrent. This has become a very popular tool to use on the Internet for downloading. In the case of Knoppix you will likely get further updates much faster with BitTorrent than from Mirrors. It's not hard to learn to use. I'm not going to write an entire BitTorrent manual in these forums (again), but when you have time go here and download a copy and read the FAQ.

On Zone Alarm and virus infection: I'm not a big Zone Alarm fan. But if your system was crawling with viruses after less than a half hour, I strongly suspect that you are on a high speed connection and not using a router with a hardware firewall built-in. I can't emphasise enough the importance of using a router when using a high speed connection, even if you have only one computer hooked to the Internet. If your modem does not have one built-in (some do now), then buy one. These things are dirt cheap now, often $10 or less after rebate (BestBuy and CompUSA both have a Linksys 802.11b router this week for $5 after rebate). I leave my systems on constantly and have no virus problems. My software firewalls don't pop up warning about any virus trying to get in, because the packets never get that far. Router logs do show almost constant attemps.

On not being able to write to the hard disk and archiving issues: There is still a lot of information you haven't posted, so it's hard to know how to advise you. If you are using XP then you likely have NTFS partitions. Knoppix can't write to NTFS partitions (a deliberate design choice by Microsoft, who have gone to great lengths to make sure of this). If you are using Win98 then you have FAT partitions, which Knoppix can write to (but see below). Knoppix 3.8.x and Knoppix 3.9 include something called a union file system that allows the ram disk and the hard disk to be viewed as one. Unfortunately, there is a bug in 3.9 and it's not working properly. So this might stop you from writing to "hard drive" even if you have a FAT system (I don't know for sure). If you have 3.8 (or a previous version and a FAT file system) you might be OK. Also, by default, Knoppix mounts partitions as read only. As long as you are not using NTFS partitions you can change this. There are several ways to make the change, the simplese way is to right click on the partition icon on the desktop and use the actions .... sub menu that pops up. Do not do this is you have NTFS (the default in XP), Knoppix will corrupt a partition if you manage to get it to write to NTFS.

I personally wouldn't want to email every file. If you have another computer and some way to network the two together (like that router I mentioned) then you could quickly transfer the files across a local network. If this is not an option and your ISO provides some space for a local web page that you can access with FTP them you can likely transfer the files that you need there (they should not be published as available to the Web as long as you don't have HTML files there). Or if you can run an FTP server on any other computer connected to the Internet that would work as well. You may also be able to save files to a USB flash drive, but again there have been lots of reports of bugs in this area with version 3.9.

Good luck. Ask if there are things I left out.

[Harry Kuhman]

OK, I did skip a thing or two. On your Linksys wireless card, you sisn't post the exact model, so we can't tell you if that card works or not. Wireless cards have been a very weak point in Knoppix. Many wireless makers will not release hardware programming information and either release no drivers for Linux or drivers that are so bad and bloated that they can't reasonably be included with Knoppix. Support is improving slowly, but the key word here is slowly. Version 3.8 was finally able to recognize one of my wireless cards (a Belkin 802.11b), will still not work with the others (Dlink).

That you mention having wireless makes me think that you do have a router (else what could you be trying to connect to). This makes your virus problem very hard to understand, even with Zone Alarm. A software firewall may help some and is very important to let you monitor and control outbound traffic, but the viruses should never get in unless you do unsafe things. Make sure you keep the DMZ feature of your router disabled.

[KathiSharpe]

Harry, you are so kind. Half of what you said flew RIGHT over my head - (for instance, all I really understood about the md5 thing was "if your knoppix works, then...) Oh dear.

I have always been the sort of person to box things up (I mean, literally. Throw reciepts, unopened bank statements, McDonalds wrappers) and carry it to HRBlock. I say, "Here. You fix it." The oil never gets changed by me. My houseplants die because I don't have a service. And.... I've never had a catastrophic computer failure like this. I'm tempted to carry the thing somewhere and say, "Here. You fix it". But a) I don't have the spare cash to do that, and b) the LAST time HR Block messed with my taxes they messed me up royally. AND - when I got that linksys router and dsl modem, the phone company dude installed it (he was being nice). Since "he wasn't supposed to" the phone company won't come and fix it. I know NOTHING about it, nothing at all. My own fault, really, on both. So by principle i'm not letting anyone touch my computer unless I'm positive that they have a clue.


BTW, I had no idea what sort of CD writer was in this thing - no idea what's in mine - I really have no idea about anything. All this technical info that you say "it would be helpful if you'd...." well, 99% of it - it just never occurred to me to put it in there. Either didn't know it existed, or wouldn't have occurred to me it was important. I'm sorry, and I thank you so much for being patient with me!!

You, Harry, have a clue. I'm half tempted to fly you here...

Except you're right, I do need to learn this stuff. Really, really need to learn it. If you can point me to a *real* "for total idiots, no really fools" place I could learn about that router... I'd appreciate it. If it's going to talk about bitstreamchecksumfirewiregooblygunk... I'm more of a "plug the green wire into the blue hole, then do this to get to a command line, then type ____________" type person. I don't need to understand it, I just want it to work.

Thanks for listening to me whine

On the router issue - I guess we're technically networked, these two laptops. We can't see each other on the network. Don't know why. Can't get Northstate to tell us why. (They will admit that since we can't, the dude who set things up perhaps was inept - but in a year and a half, that's as far as I've gotten). So I wouldn't begin to know how to make the two computers "see" each other.

Here's where I'm at. I took the advice of Rusty and got on the #Knoppix channel on IRC (WOW - that GAIM thing is EASY!! I like it ). A couple of guys there took me on as a project and walked me through a few things - I have a... NTFS? The opposite of FAT, which is what most folks thought I would have, hard drive.

They taught me how to make a folder on the desk top (which somehow only exists in the ether) and make zip files there, and then send THOSE through gmail. I can't add too many files to them, because it's all happening in the RAM. (they warned me, and I know now that too many really DOES cause a meltdown!)

So that's what I'm doing now.

The biggest snag I am running into is that random windows open (and sometimes, close or take action). Mostly it's if I hover the mouse over a window, a file item, or an action button (like submit/preview at the bottom of a post, or "send" on an email). A few minutes ago, a gmail screen just appeared out of "nowhere" - it's something that, if I'd been hovering the mouse cursor over, might've come forward... but I wasn't. Earlier, when I was adding stuff to an email, it sent right out of the blue... and the mouse was nowhere near it. It's not disabling, more of an annoyance... but maybe there's something, somewhere that I can tweak to fix it? I have a toshiba touchpad mouse - I'm really really not sure where to look to find out what version, etc. it is. If you could give me some hints as to what folder it's in, I can let you know if you think that might be the problem. Or if there's a way to type something in the konsole and find out, the guys on #knoppix had me do that earlier to sort the ntfs/fat issue, so I know how, sort of.

Thanks for all your help!

Kathi