What if your Windows never boots?

Hi All,

Finally, posting my first technical post to the world's most commonly faced problem.

Problem:

You login to your laptop and you find that your Windows XP is taking long time to startup. The problem exaggerates with finally the system crashing down. You have a HDD of 80 Gb with full data in it.

Extreme Thought:

You start getting the fear of - " What if all the 80Gb data is lost? "

Ananth Gouri Solution:

Many of us have faced this problem many times and we have never been able to think for a moment for the simplest solution readily available. Here comes in Linux from nowhere.

The easiest solution is to use a Bootable Linux CD like Ubuntu 8.10, or Knoppix. I would prefer to use SystemRescue CD. [The links to all the Linux OS are given at the end.]

Step by step procedure with Ubuntu:

1. Restart Windows.
2. Put Ubuntu Live CD in the DVD writer.
3. Login to the live system of Linux.
4. Mount the windows partition with the following commands:
ananth@ubuntu$ mkdir windowsDrive
ananth@ubuntu$ mount /dev/sda1 windowsDrive
5. Now your windows drive is mounted to your windowsDrive in Ubuntu.
6. Use the mouse and copy paste what all files required from your Windows to Linux.
7. But you would require an External HDD to move all the files to.
8. Or you can burn the data to a dvd after the content is mounted.

Note: For users with multiple windows partitions, create different folders and execute the commands in step 4.

In this way you back all your data too and can happily re-install your Windows.

This idea is known to many people around the world. But for me it was my assembler - Ananth Ram who gave me this idea.

After reading this blog post if you feel, "Why did not I get this idea?", don't worry because..........

Failure is the stepping stone to success.

Links :

1. www.ubuntu.com
2. www.knoppix.org
3. www.sysresccd.org
Thanks,
Ananth Gouri