PLEASE HELP ME!!

[sidnelp]

This morning windows decided to crash on me. It won't boot back up. Luckily I had tried Knoppix a few weeks ago and still had the cd. Honestly, I have no idea how to work this o.s. I'm in the middle of final week at school and have a presentation that needs to be ready for tomorrow. It's a large file and will require around 645MB. I understand Knoppix has the burning software k3b and I've tried to set it up. I've already set my root password so I type that in when prompted. It finds my two burners just fine and I believe the other settings are alright, but when I click OK it says it could not update all of the permissions. Then it closes. I am desperate and have no experience outside of windows and a little dos from back in the day. If anyone could help me before the end of the day it would be MUCH appreciated.

[OErjan]

if you are desperate try

sudo k3b

that will let you run k3b as root. be careful.
btw burn it without making an ISO first otherwise your ram might run low FAST (if you have less than 1.5Gb)

[sidnelp]

Nevermind, I got windows going again.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... I'm in the middle of final week at school and have a presentation that needs to be ready for tomorrow. It's a large file and will require around 645MB. I understand Knoppix has the burning software......

Knoppix has burning software, but unless you have a lot of ram or a second CD drive that is also a CD writer, then you have an extra problem - you need the Knoppix CD in the drive toactually be running Knoppix.

Here are some quick suggestions on how to work around this: If you are on a network and you can transfer the file to another machine, do that with Knoppix. If you have acces to a 1 gig flash menory stick, put it in the system when Knoppix boots, right click on hard drive sda1 and select mount, right click again on hard drive sda1 and select action and pick the choice that makes the device read-write (it defauls to read only for safety). Then you can copy the file there. Use the browser to transfer the file to a website like www.yousendit.com, who will hold it there for up to seven days while you set up to get it back (this will require that your connection is fast enough to make the upload and later download reasonable).

If none of the above seem like they will work for you, here's another work around for the Knoppix must be in the CD drive problem: Use a distro of a live CD that is much smaller than Knoppix. I would suggest Damn Small Linux. It's only about 50 meg and has a CD burner in it as well. There are two ways you could use it: One would be to use the toram option to copy all of it to ram; that should let you take out the CD and insert a blank that you can write to. The second, the one I've actually done, is to write the iso as the first sesion of a multi-session CD. Be sure that "finalize the CD" is not checked. You can use this CD to boot into Damn Small Linux. Then, with the CD still in the drive, you can run the burning software. I forget the name, but it's all command line based and very easy to use (as long as you are not in a panic). I had a CD burnt in just a few minutes. You burn the files that you want to the second session of the CD. Sounds like they will just fit in the remaining 650 megs of a 700 meg CD with a few megs left over. The result is a CD with both DSL and the recovered files on it. This CD is no longer bootable, but it holds the recovered data.

Good Luck.

[sidnelp]

Thank you both for you suggestions. I eventually got XP to boot for me. However, at some point I want to stop relying on XP so much and learn my way around linux. It's times like these when I realize how unstable windows can be and how much I depend on it. I like knoppix because it doesn't require me to use a dual-boot startup thing. I believe to set this up I would have to add a new partition to my drive and to do that I would have to reformat my entire drive as well. As for your suggestions, I've got 1GB of ram and two burners so that isn't an issue. I'm on the residence network here but I have absolutely no idea how I would go about transferring files. Yousendit would have worked (I tried finding a good web-storage site with no success) and I could have possibly located a mem stick but I'm not too sure. I am curious why the burning software would not work for me. Does it require files be placed on my hard disk? When I was messing around with it I figured out that my hard drive cannot be written to. I made sure it was not on read-only but that didn't help. I'm thinking maybe because it's NFTS? Also, my sound card does not work with knoppix. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. I tried using 'knoppix alsa' when booting but that didn't work. Maybe it's not supported. Anyway, thank you both for responding so quickly. I'm sure I will be on here with more questions as my exploration continues.

[Harry Kuhman]

.... I believe to set this up I would have to add a new partition to my drive and to do that I would have to reformat my entire drive as well. .

You can run Knoppix fine off the CD (or with that much memory, with the toram option) just fine. To write anything to the CD you would need a partition that you can write to, and that isn't a NTFS partition. No, you would not have to reformat your entire hard drive. What I did on my notebook (that came with XP) was to use Partition Magic to shrink the NTFS partition down to a bit more than the space it already took up. Then I created a FAT partition in the remaining space. Both Knoppix and Xp can read and write to the FAT (although in Knoppix it still defaults to a safe read-only mount and you explicity mount it read/write if you want to). I'm still running Knoppix from CD, nothing installed.

As for your suggestions, I've got 1GB of ram and two burners so that isn't an issue.

Yup, you're in great shape there. I can't tell you what happened wrong for you when writing a CD. I wasn't there and actually I've never done it in Knoppix (one CD writer and not enough memory for the toram option), just in DSL. But it was extremely easy with the burner built in to DSL. My suggestion would be to sit down some time with Knoppix and a pile of blank CDR media or (better yet) a couple of CDRW's and play with it a bit before you need it, then you'll be ready the next time xp strikes. Failing that, get a copy of DSL and try that.

When I was messing around with it I figured out that my hard drive cannot be written to. I made sure it was not on read-only but that didn't help. I'm thinking maybe because it's NFTS?

You should never make an NTFS partition read/write under Knoppix. Just be glad that you (apparently) were not punished for this. Other types of partitions can be made read/write (from what you say you've already found how to do this).

Also, my sound card does not work with knoppix. I have a Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS. I tried using 'knoppix alsa' when booting but that didn't work. Maybe it's not supported.

Not sure about that. Maybe someone who knows will respond here, but a seperate post in the hardware forum with Audigy in the subject is likely to catch more eyes. Good luck.