Knoppix won't detect hardware

[Werner P. Schulz]

.. and there are no minimize, maximize and close buttons in the window when I open one. Also I cannot move the window.

It's an ugly effect of Compiz; therefore I always use the cheatcode "knoppix no3d". Can you see the content of sda1 within PCManFM (2nd icon from left in the panel)? If no, get you errors with

fdisk -l /dev/sda

If yes, perhaps Testdisk may help you. It's not a tool for unexperienced users!

[Linden]

Thank you Mr. Schulz for the reply. I am an absolute beginner, but today when I booted Knoppix DVD on my laptop with infected HDD I could normally close, minimize and maximize windows. I did press F2 for help though in the boot prompt but only to snoop around and when I saw option (press I believe F3) Show Desktop I did that.

Still it does not show any disks (partitions) in PCManFM only Knoppix, Desktop and Applications. When I typed suggested code I got this:

knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10337 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb2f2b2f2

   Device Boot    Start                End            Blocks    Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63   156280319    78140128+   7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

How can I access this disk and see and rescue files? Thank you for your time and patience.

[Werner P. Schulz]

How to use cheatcodes - for example "knoppix no3d"

Your disk geometry reported by fdisk seem ok, but PCManFM fails. If also

df -h

cannot see anything about size and used part of your harddrive you have to try "testdisk". Perhaps this tool can find and restore something.

It's an important recommendation to create an image on a separate harddrive and to use this image.

[Linden]

When I enter recommended code I get this: knoppix@Microknoppix:~$ df -h Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on rootfs 498M 44K 498M 1% / /dev/sr0 4.0G 4.0G 0 100% /mnt-system tmpfs 2.0G 38M 2.0G 2% /ramdisk /dev/cloop 10G 10G 0 100% /KNOPPIX unionfs 2.0G 38M 2.0G 2% /UNIONFS unionfs 2.0G 38M 2.0G 2% /usr unionfs 2.0G 38M 2.0G 2% /home tmpfs 20M 3.0M 18M 15% /run tmpfs 20M 3.0M 18M 15% /UNIONFS/var/run tmpfs 10M 0 10M 0% /UNIONFS/var/lock tmpfs 100M 44K 100M 1% /UNIONFS/var/log tmpfs 2.0G 8.0K 2.0G 1% /tmp udev 20M 0 20M 0% /dev tmpfs 2.0G 0 2.0G 0% /dev/shm When I connect USB stick it gets recognized and I can see it in the PCManFM, so I suppose the infected hard disk is infected with some very sneaky virus or something like that. I guess only thing to do now is to learn how to play with 'testdisk' tool, and that will take a while. Thank you Mr. Schulz for your time and effort.