Not allowing write mode to be set, please help

[ry0t]

Hello,
I hope this is the right forum for this question. I am sorry to bother you all but I've been working on my computer all day. It is a windows XP machine that has a virus. I made a knoppix live cd to boot with. I ran a f-prot virus scan and it found viruses but didnt clean them because I didnt have write permission set. It was in read only. That is what wasted most of the day.

I followed more instructions to mount the drive which is located at /dev/hda1 then I right clicked to change read/write permission but it says "the command failed, maybe there is another process accessing the file system".

[ry0t]

I was able to clear up this situation by searching this forum. Sorry for making a topic so fast. It turns out I had to use ntfsfix through the command prompt because it was "dirty". I havent had the situation fixed yet Im still going through the steps however it looks promising. I hate spending money on computer fixes.

[Harry Kuhman]

My advice: don't try to write to a NTFS file system with Knoppix. Use Knoppix to safely read the disk, make backups of the files that you need (across a network is a handy way to do this, but there are also other ways), and then do a fresh install of Windows complete with a full reformat. To be fair, there are some people who think that writing to NTFS is safe with Knoppix, but the version of the software used in Knoppiox does not seem to support that belief. See this post from someone who determined that the hard way.

You at least have access to the files that you didn't back up with Knoppix, don't risk you last chance to get them by writing to a NTFS partition with Knoppix.

[ry0t]

Hello,
Thank you for your reply. In general I have already used "ntfsfix" from the command prompt. Will that already write to the partition? Secondly I've mounted and changed the read/write access to writable. I did nothing else yet. Another question is when you say do not write to the ntfs I would be running a virus scan with f-prot to disinfect (which would probably write) and delete. Is it true that would mean it would write to the partition?

[Harry Kuhman]

I don't know at what point the damage is done. I've just seen over many years that people who write to NTFS with Knoppix often but not always suffer corrupted file systems. Sometimes right away, sometimes the corruption is not spotted until later. If you have done any harm yet is not the real question, if you can no longer access your files I guess we know the answer. But if you can read them and the data that you want seems to be there, then I still suggest making good backups now and then reinstalling Windows fresh.

[ry0t]

Thank you for your help. I will make a backup with my external harddrive. Then I will try to fix it and not care if I blow it up. Unless its already blown up. However I do like knoppix this is very interesting.