Recovering files from unbooable PC

[codythecool]

Hi everyone, got a bit of a problem... I have a dell m1530 latop, vista ultimate specs are in my signature, anyway when i start my computer it goes to load vista and i quickly get BSOD and it shuts down, its not detecting my partition with windows on it. When i go to repair with the disk the partition wont show up and i used the driver disk that came with my pc for my hard drive but that didnt work. i got a kubuntu disk and loaded it fine(running off the disk because installing it will format the drive... im pretty sure...), then i can see my files from windows, except everything in the documents and settings folder (which has all my important fles in it), probably for security reasons i dunno. I also have a 250GB external drive to move all my files to from my PC's hdd, but i cannot open the drive because windows didnt shut down correctly. So i just need to access all my files and be able to get them to the external drive, then i will just reinstall windows. Sorry if i should be posting this in the Linux threads, im not too sure what one i should use lol anyway thanks to anyone who can help

[p0p0]

You should be able to just directly copy all those files from you HDD to your External using the kubuntu LiveCD. If you can't see your Documents and Settings, remember that in Vista, its under C:/Users/YourName, not C:/Documents and Settings/YourName. If you can't see the Users folder, it may very well be that your HDD is corrupted, but I doubt that is the case.

So just copy all your files, then use something like GParted to format the partition before using your recovery disk. Google "Gparted Live", and you can use that if you can't find it under kubuntu. You just need an CD or USB drive.

[codythecool]

I cannot copy anything to my external hdd when running kubuntu off of the cd, i also cannot install anything or go on the internet, probably because my only option is to try kubuntu (because i dont want to format the drive yet). And i know nothing is corrupted i can see everything on my harddrive except everything in the documents and settings folder.

[p0p0]

You should be able to copy everything using kubuntu. Its the whole OS, just running off the CD. You can use the built-in Bittorent client (Transmission I think its called) to download Hi-Ren's BootCD (look it up on any torrent search engine) and burn that to a CD, it has a MiniXP on it that you can also use to copy your files.

[codythecool]

Hey thanks for the help p0p0 but after finding some commands i got into the folders and force mounted the external hdd, long story short its all being copied

[p0p0]

Yay. This has happened to me too many times, so I'm glad you got it.

[taraff1]

Glad to heaar it worked out cody. I have used kubuntu in the past for recoveries as well!