Can only boot knoppix in failsafe mode

[Orion6]

Hi all,
I'm trying to load knoppix on a PC with XP that will not boot; My C: drive has lost it's label an now the recovery partition D: has relabeled itself as C:, so boots right into recovery mode. (not a big fan of HP)
I can get knoppix 5.1.1 to boot from the CD but only in failsafe mode and here are my real issues;

1. I have a trackball - does not work, I can use the keypad but that's about worthless.
2. Tried running TestDisk and got the same error I've seen posted by others re; "libntfs.so.10.0.0" so I tried the fix that changes it to "libntfs.so.9". Now I just get an error that says it does not exist. Tried changing it back and it won't let me.

So, having fun playing around with knoppix - but I'm not solving anything. Also finding ways around no mouse but it would be a lot nicer with one.
And it would be really nice to run testdisk.
Any suggestions??

[Harry Kuhman]

Failsafe bypasses most of hardware detection, including finding the mouse. Find the proper cheat codes to make your system boot and a mouse (or a device that works like a mouse) can be detected.

Testdisk often helps, but sometimes Windows just mucks up a partition so badly that it can't (has done that 3 times to me). gpart also might fix a partition if it's the mbr that's bad, but if the partition is ruined then there may not be much Linux can do.

[Orion6]

gpart is doing a scan right now;
first thing I get is;
** Error: invalid extended ptbl found at sector(131468400).

Seems to have found my other partitions okay but I'm not sure what this error means or if it just telling me my original C: partition is beyond hope.

[Harry Kuhman]

** Error: invalid extended ptbl found at sector(131468400).

That is pretty strange. It seems to me to be saying that the extended partition table is corrupt. But that's the partition table that holds the logical drives (in your case I would expect that to be the HP recovery partition). It shouldn't have anything to do with the C partition, which is a physical partition pointed to by the MBR, not a logical drive in the extended partition table.

[Orion6]

since the recovery partition relabeled itself as the C drive, I think that the MBR is simply doing what it's supposed to do.
On the desktop of knoppix I have hda1, hda2, hda5 and hda6. I know that one of them is a "safe" partition I created to try and go in with another program to do a restoral but I couldn't get far enough along in the boot process to access it.
hda1 is my missing partition and it seems to be accessible from knoppix/Linux. I just can't figure out how to relabel it as the C drive. I'm pretty sure evertthing would work okay then.

[Harry Kuhman]

I have hda1, hda2, hda5 and hda6.

Again, not typical. hda1 and hda2 are both real physical partitions, which is not typical of Windows, generally Windows will only let you have 1 physical partition and makes you create the rest as a logical drive in an extended partition. This may be something strange that HP did, but seeing that as well as 2 logical partitions is certainly something that I have not seen them do before.

hda1 is my missing partition and it seems to be accessible from knoppix/Linux. I just can't figure out how to relabel it as the C drive. I'm pretty sure evertthing would work okay then.

You absolutely should not try to change this partition with Knoppix. If Knoppix can see it then the MBR is correct, and Knoppix should not be used to write to a NTFS partition itself. (Think about, if Microsoft can't even write to NTFS partitions safely [and we see plenty of proof here that they fail to on a regular basis], what are the chances that Linux could improperly write to this proprietary format? ) I suggest instead that you consider yourself very lucky that Knoppix can see the data that you want and that you make yourself good backups of whatever you want and then freshly install Windows on your C partition (assuming that you still want Windows). There are many ways to back up your data with Knoppix, my personal favorite is to install a FTP server on another system and then use Konquror as an FTP client to transfer the files to it across a network (but do whatever works for you). Writing to hda1, if you can manage to do it, may very well be the final nail in the coffin and destroy your last chance at data recovery, it is not safe even when Windows thinks the partition is good, let alone when it seems to be bad.