Boot from USB?

flogen

I'm a complete noob at this so excuse any ignorant questions.

I just got a blue-screen of death when trying to boot on my WinXP laptop - it's a hard drive issue but I'm hoping only some of it is corrupted and I can still salvage my other information (the stuff I haven't backed up - nothing vital but important all the same).

I know nothing about these things but I'm hoping I can find a way to bypass the WinXp boot (I get the blue-screen just after the loading XP screen) and get access to my files that way.

I'm hoping I can boot an OS from a disc or USB which will allow me to get onto a desktop screen from which I can start copying files over to an external drive.

Is this possible or do I need to have a fully functioning internal drive to have any hope of booting anything??

If it is, what OS do people recommend; I'm looking for something easy rather than laden with functionality - the HDD is almost certainly destined for the bin so the OS I use here won't matter... although I do imagine I'll get a new HDD and maybe test out a Linux distro on it like I've been planning to do once I got myself a 'spare' PC in the future!

Thanks for any advice - fingers crossed my music library won't be lost forever!

Sherifu

You need to change your boot order in your BIOS or bring up the boot option screen if supported.

Start hitting F2, F8, F12, DEL at POST - whatever works

Don't need a fully functioning drive. A ubuntu live cd is fairly straightforward.

SkepticOne

flogen wrote: »

Is this possible or do I need to have a fully functioning internal drive to have any hope of booting anything??

If it is, what OS do people recommend; I'm looking for something easy rather than laden with functionality - the HDD is almost certainly destined for the bin so the OS I use here won't matter... although I do imagine I'll get a new HDD and maybe test out a Linux distro on it like I've been planning to do once I got myself a 'spare' PC in the future!

I've found that linux systems are better at accessing corrupted Windows partitions than Windows itself. There are linux distributions specifically for this purpose such as recovery is possible (RIP) but I would go for something like Ubuntu which provides graphical tools similar to Windows Explorer and will allow you to copy your mp3s to an external USB drive or whereever. Much larger download with Ubuntu of course.

Note that the blue screen of death may just be the result of one corrupted operating system file. You should also check with the windows forum to see about recovery or reinstallation of the operating system there.

Orion

A liveCD may be the easiest - if you can't make one due to the laptop being buggered this month's Linux Format mag has a bootable Fedora 10 disk with it. Or if you're based in Dublin city centre I could meet you at lunch time and give you a Ubuntu Live CD.

GreenHell

https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/ <- Fantastic tool

flogen

Thanks for everyone for your help and offers - really appreciative.

I downloaded Ubuntu LiveCD on my brother's PC and tried it out - got it running no problem but unfortunately I've not been able to access the HDD.

I got some advice from a site called www.howtogeek.com about changing values so I could access it (involved going into the terminal and telling it to mount the drive even though it was saying Windows hadn't unmounted it, or something).

Did all of that but it still wouldn't let me in - possibly could be because the HDD is damaged; I'm still not sure if it's physical or 'viral' damage but I'm sadly starting to assume the former, which suggests a grim situation.

I'm going to have another crack at the whip now and see if I missed anything - if that fails I'll just have to pick up a sata-usb adaptor and hope I can salvage things that way. If that fails, it may well be end-game.

If anyone has any suggestions please pass them on - will try anything to save my precious files (and a 1TB NAS is on its way to me to ensure this doesn't happen again).

Thanks.

flogen

Just to give more info, here's what the website's how-to advised me to do:

Go into terminal, get onto admin mode (sudo /bin/bash)
Make a mount directory (mkdir /media/disk)
Force a mount (mount -t /dev/sda2 /media/disk -o force)

I have the name and type of the HDD correct and once I put in the above command I'm told:
$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 1)
WARNING: Forced mount, reset $LogFile

After a while with nothing else I'm told:
ntfs_attr_pread: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or you have hardware faults, or you have a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows TWICE. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If you have SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first you must activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for the details.

So can anyone decypher this for me?

What does Soft/FakeRAID mean and how do I find out if I am using it... and if I am what does it mean?

I'm not even sure where I need to go on my PC to enter chkdsk /f, or if I'd need to be able to get past the XP loading screen to do so.

ethernet

flogen wrote: »

Force a mount (mount -t /dev/sda2 /media/disk -o force)

Is this what you typed or did you put anything between -t and /dev/sda2 to specify the actual file system?

Fake-RAID/soft-RAID would be a RAID configuration of two or more disks using software more than a dedicated controller card. It spells trouble most of the time, much like winmodems under Linux.

flogen

ethernet wrote: »

Is this what you typed or did you put anything between -t and /dev/sda2 to specify the actual file system?

Fake-RAID/soft-RAID would be a RAID configuration of two or more disks using software more than a dedicated controller card. It spells trouble most of the time, much like winmodems under Linux.

Sorry, I did... it was something like htfs-3g; haven't got it in front of me to check exactly.

So given that I'm only dealing with one disk, you're saying the Fake/SoftRAID thing suggests my drive is in rag order?

Do you know much about the programme 'SuperGRUB'? I get the impression from the limited info on the site that it can help you boot Windows (and Linux) when you're having trouble but can't figure out how.

Is there a tool out there to help me boot windows other than doing a repair (which might not work and might erase files).

Thanks again.

Sherifu

flogen wrote: »

Sorry, I did... it was something like htfs-3g; haven't got it in front of me to check exactly.

So given that I'm only dealing with one disk, you're saying the Fake/SoftRAID thing suggests my drive is in rag order?

Do you know much about the programme 'SuperGRUB'? I get the impression from the limited info on the site that it can help you boot Windows (and Linux) when you're having trouble but can't figure out how.

Is there a tool out there to help me boot windows other than doing a repair (which might not work and might erase files).

Thanks again.

$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 1)

This seems to indicate to me the volume is dirty and needs a checkdisk. You could do that from a recovery console with a windows disk. Then try mount it in ubuntu again. That's my best guess just looking over what you've done.

TeaServer

Sherifu wrote: »

$LogFile indicates unclean shutdown (0, 1)

This seems to indicate to me the volume is dirty and needs a checkdisk. You could do that from a recovery console with a windows disk. Then try mount it in ubuntu again. That's my best guess just looking over what you've done.

+1

Did you try to run

chkdsk /P 

or

chkdsk /f 

from a recovery console? If that fails, your HD is probably beyond repair.

If you run chkdsk and still can not boot to Windows, you 'should' be able to mount to HD in Ubuntu and recover the files that way.

flogen

Ran chkdsk /r (tried /f as recommended by Ubuntu but it wasn't recognised).

The /r seems to have worked a treat, though, at least in terms of giving me access to the desktop again. I'm working under the assumption that this is a temporary window so I'm backing everything up now... will wait and see what happens next.

Thanks to everyone for their help - from the quick run of Ubuntu I quite liked it - if/when I end up getting a new full-on laptop I'm going to use this bit for OS experimentation.

SkepticOne

Well done. Now that you have everything backed up, have you tried doing a windows restore or reinstallation to get your windows booting again? You could then install Ubuntu as an additional OS on the laptop and have a dual boot system.

Sherifu

Ya, I usually run chkdsk with /r to try to repair disks. Good to hear you got backed up anyway.