|
| | | 
Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 11:20:42 AM
Posts: 1,783, Visits: 1,547 |
| This guide is for those folks who have a Vista machine that will not boot into Vista anymore, and will not respond positively to either a Startup Repair or a Reinstallation. Both of these other activities are documented in this Forum and should be used before the activity detailed here.
In the event that your Vista machine simply will not boot, the only option available to you to get a working machine back is a complete installation of the OS from scratch. If you have a relatively “new” machine., with nothing worth saving, then you don't need this guide. But, if, as is the more typical case, you have a machine that you've used for months and don't want to lose all that work as a byproduct of a format and installation, this guide is for you.
Some background ...
Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution. The current stable version is 7.10, known as Gutsy Gibbon. This version is capable of mounting and reading NTFS-formatted partitions, meaning that it can read the files in your Vista volume on your PC.
A “LiveCD” is a bootable CD of Ubuntu that allows you to load the OS into memory and run from the CD itself. This can be done WITHOUT installing the OS to your hard drive. This is a feature that Ubuntu shares with many other GNU/Linux distros. Amazing, but true!
The process described below will consist of the following major steps:
1) Obtaining the Ubuntu LiveCD
2) Booting the PC using the CD
3) Loading the OS
4) Examining your Desktop
5) Obtaining information on your Vista volume
6) Mounting your Vista volume
7) Attaching an external/USB pendrive or harddrive
8) Copying the Windows files to the attached drive
9) Removing the attached drive
10) Unmounting the Windows volume(s)
11) Shutting down the PC
Note: This guide presumes that the Ubuntu LiveCD will boot your machine and will display a Desktop. While that is generally the case, as with anything related to PCs, that is not always true. If the CD doesn't boot properly for you, you will need to go to the Ubuntu forums to get help. Debugging LiveCD problems is outside the scope of this Forum.
1) Obtaining the Ubuntu LiveCD
The Ubuntu CD image can be downloaded from the following location:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu
Click the Download Ubuntu tab
Select the Ubuntu 7.10, Desktop edition release, and Standard personal computer.
Choose a location near you.
Click the Start Download button. The download will begin.
Click the Save to Disk button and choose a location that can store a full CD image (600+ MB).
Notice that under the “Need Help?” section, there are links you can click that will tell you how to burn the image file to CD. If you don't already know how to do this, click and read the information associated with these links.
Note: If you do not have access to working PC to download and burn the image, on the first web page, instead of using the Download Ubuntu tab, click the third tab and request a CD. You will be taken to a page to request CDs. If you want a free one, it will take up to 10 weeks for them to send it to you (after all, it's free!!) But if you're willing to purchase one, you can buy packs of CDs, or individual DVDs. The CD contains the OS; the DVD contains the OS plus a ton of other packages. The DVD is useful if you want to actually install the OS and lots of packages without downloading them from the Ubuntu servers online. The linked pages provide you all the details.
2) Booting the PC using the CD(or DVD)
Now that you have the Ubuntu disk, you need to boot from it.
To do this, you need to change your BIOS settings to boot from CD/DVD. You will have to go into the BIOS settings during you machine boot in order to do that. Each PC is different, but generally, pressing the “Del” key or “F1” will typically put you into a BIOS main menu.
From there, tab to your Boot menu, and rearrange the order of your boot devices to have the CD/DVD device first in the list.
Open the CD/DVD drive, insert the Ubuntu disk, close the drive door.
Exit and Save (usually “F10").
Reboot the machine.
When it reboots, it will read the Ubuntu disk and bring up a menu. The screen will have a black background. Centered at the top will be the Ubuntu logo and the word Ubuntu in white transparent letters. Below that will be a menu, the first item being “Start or install Ubuntu”, shown in white, with the remaining menu items shown in brown. At the bottom of the screen will be a function key bar, ranging from F1 Help, to F6 Other options.
If you see this menu, then you're in good shape; if not, Ubuntu has problems with your video card/chip. Solving such problems is beyond the scope of this article. Go to the Ubuntu forum to get details on such solutions.
When the first menu entry is shown in white text, press the Enter key. This will start the OS loading process.
3) Loading the OS
This will take a while – several minutes.
While this is happening, a progress bar will appear in the middle of the screen.
When done, the screen will go black while the Desktop loads.
4) Examining your Desktop
Welcome to Ubuntu, or more specifically, to the Gnome desktop of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu comes with several different Desktops. Gnome is loaded by default. KDE (Kubuntu) and XFCE (Xubuntu) are others, along with additional variants.
Along the top edge of the Desktop, you will see (from the left) the Ubuntu logo, the Applications menu entry, the Places menu entry, the System menu entry, an icon for Firefox, an icon for Evolution Mail, and an icon for Ubuntu Help. If you click the Ubuntu logo, you'll get a pulldown, tiered menu of programs, much like the “old” XP programs menu but tiering from the top of the Desktop instead of the bottom.
On the top right of the Desktop, you should see an icon for Network connection, the date and time (yes, it's on the top instead of the bottom of the screen), and a running figure. This figure on the right serves much the same function as pressing the Start button in windows and selecting a shutdown option.
On the bottom left of the Desktop, you will see a button to press to hide all the windows on the Desktop, and an area to hold tabs for launched programs (similar to the TaskBar in Windows).
On the bottom right of the Desktop (the area in Windows known as the System Tray) you will see icons for Desktop selection (multiple desktops are available by default) and the trash can (yes, on the lower right instead of the upper left).
Note: Please be PATIENT when clicking on anything on the desktop. The delay is not an indicator of Ubuntu being slow, quite the opposite, Ubuntu is lightening fast. The delay is due to the fact that you are actually running the OS from the CD/DVD without loading it to your hard drive. That means that every menu click requires searching the CD/DVD and loading the program into memory before executing it. That all takes time.
5) Obtaining information on your Vista volume
Now that you're running Ubuntu, it's time to locate your Vista volume.
To do this, you first have to open a Terminal window. This is much the same function as opening a command window in Windows. Click Applications --> Accessories --> Terminal. A terminal window will open on the Desktop.
Click the mouse inside this window and type “sudo fdisk -l”. The “sudo” is short for “super user do” and is instructing Ubuntu to run the following command as Root (much the same as the default Administrator in Vista). The “fdisk -l” command (that's dash-ell, not dash-one) displays information on your “fixed” disks. Don't worry, it's NOT going to reformat your disks!
You will get a scrolling display of information, with a block of information for each disk, followed by a list of partitions on that disk. Look for the disk that has “HPFS/NTFS” under the right-most “System” column. These are Windows partitions. If you only have Vista on your machine, and you only have one partition, it will be “sda1”. If you have more than one windows partition, but only Vista on your machine, it will still probably be “sda1”.
If you have more than one OS (e.g., both XP and Vista), you'll have to sort out which partition belongs to which OS on your own. Ubuntu sees only the partitions; it doesn't know one Windows OS from another.
When you locate your Vista volume in the display, notice the “Device” information in the left-most column. You will see something like “dev/sda1” or “dev/hdc1”. The “sd” indicates it's a SATA drive; the “hd” indicates it's a PATA (IDE) drive.
Your first SATA drive is always “sda”, followed by “sdb”, “sdc”.., etc.
Your first PATA/IDE drive is always “hdc”, followed by “hdd”, “hde”, etc.
The numbers following the “sda” or “hdc” are the individual partitions on each drive.
Make note of the “sd” or “hd” designation of your Vista volume – you will need it later.
6) Mounting your Vista volume
Ubuntu can't work with a volume until it is mounted, This action assigns the volume a Mount Point in the file system and also tells Ubuntu whether to mount it read-only or read-write. For our purposes, to prevent any further damage to your Vista volume, we want to mount it read-only.
To do this, we will need to use the Mount command.
To see what volumes are already mounted, type “mount” in the terminal window. You will see a list of all the mounted volumes, along thwi the device, the root directory in the file system for that volume, the type of filesystem on that volume, and mount parameters.
To prepare for mounting the Vista volume, we need to create a Mount Point for it in the filesystem. To do this, enter the following command in the Terminal window: “sudo mkdir /media/Vista”Notice that the directory separators are forward slashes, not backward slashes (as in Windows).
To see if this worked, type the following command in the Terminal window: “ls -l /media”. You should get a list of directories under /media, with an entry for Vista.
Now, it's time to do the actual Mount operation. Let's presume the Vista volume is “sda1”.
To do this, enter the following command in the Terminal window:
“sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/Vista -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222”
This will mount your Vista volume under the /media/Vista directory in the filesystem, and will mount it read-only. It should also open a Nautilus (the default Gnome equivalent of Windows Explorer) window with the contents of your Vista volume listed.
This is essentially the “C” drive of your Vista machine. One way to tell that you have the correct volume is to scroll down through the file list. You should see a folder for Program Files, and down near the bottom, you should see an entry for pagefile.sys.
Don't worry if you open the Documents and Setting folder and find it empty. That's the way it's supposed to be. In Vista, that is just a link to the real directory – which is under Users.
If you don't see these, you've mounted the wrong volume. But. no harm done! You mounted this read-only, so you're not going to be able to damage it in any way. Just page down to the bottom of this guide and see the section on Unmounting the volume. Do that and come back to this step, entering a different Mount command.
If you have more than one windows partition, and you should, such that your data is not in the Vista volume, do the same steps as above with the exception that you'll need to create a Mount Point for this second drive, Name that /media/Mydata and repeat the commands above but using this Mount Point instead.
7) Attaching an external USB pendrive or harddrive
Mounting an external USB pendrive or harddrive in Ubuntu is no harder than it is in Vista – you just plug it in.
Ubuntu will detect the new drive and add an icon to your deskop for the device. The drive icon will most probably have the name of “disk”. It might also automatically open a Nautilus window for that drive. If not, double-click the drive icon to open an Nautilus window.
8) Copying the Windows files to the attached drive
To copy files and folders, you use the same drag-and-drop approach as you learned in Windows.
Navigate through the folders structure to the folders and files you want to copy, click on the source, drag the mouse to the attached drive, and release the mouse button.
Ubuntu will copy the folders and files to the attached drive.
9) Removing the attached drive
When done, you need to Unmount the attached drive.
In Vista, you have to hunt down the icon in the System Tray area. But in Ubuntu, you close any Nautilus windows you have open for the attached drive, right click the drive icon on the Desktop, and select Unmount Volume.
You will see the drive icon vanish from the Desktop.
You can now unplug the attached drive.
10) Unmounting the Window(s) volumes
Since you mounted the Windows volume(s) using the Terminal, you must Unmount them the same way.
First, close any Nautilus windows associated with your Windows volumes.
Second, enter the “umount” command, as follows:
“sudo umount /dev/sda1” (using the same “dev” designation as you did in the Mount command)
Do this for each Windows volume you mounted.
11) Shutting down the PC
You're nearly done!!! Your files are on an external drive now, and you can plug that drive into any Windows box to see them.
To shut down the PC, click on the running figure on the upper-right corner of the screen and select Shutdown.
At some point, you get a message on the screen to remove the CD/DVD and press Enter. Remove the media, then press Enter.
Your machine will then shut done.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: XP Pro, Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Vista Business, Ubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
 |
| |
| | | |
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 3/13/2008 8:29:14 AM
Posts: 3, Visits: 38 |
| | Hi, Just to let you know, it is no longer necessary to do the "sudu" thing in Ubuntu. All you have to do is choose Places (I think) off the top menu. Then Computer. All the drives are right there and mounted. That is why Ubuntu has been so popular. Also, 7.10 live CD has read and write capability to ntfs. We use it to good effect in removing files that defy deleting. We normally use move-on-boot, killbox, and others. But these just do not work on some stubborn malware. Cheers, Packrat1947 |
| |
| | | |
Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 11:20:42 AM
Posts: 1,783, Visits: 1,547 |
| Just to let you know, it is no longer necessary to do the "sudu" thing in Ubuntu.
I don't know how you're getting around using "sudo", but a general remark about it not being necessary is misleading. I do work with LiveCDs every day, and root permissions are still needed for certain functions.
Let's not have an argument about this. This is not the Ubuntu forum.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: XP Pro, Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Vista Business, Ubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
|
| |
| | | | Vista Beginner
 
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/26/2008 8:18:20 AM
Posts: 53, Visits: 64 |
| Alternatively one could use a WinPE disc and recover files that way. Although its mainly command line, it would probably be more familiar for most than trying to use a Linux Distro, plus its only a ~130mb boot image.
You can also use WinPE to capture a backup of your entire disc and store it for later restoration, incase you dont have CPC on your version of Vista or prefer a more long-term approach to backups. You can even mount the image from time to time and install updates, service packs, etc and then save it again (all without actually making it live on the machine)
Just some thoughts. As it is possible to fully support a windows environment without ever having to resort to the "other guys" |
| |
| | | |
Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 11:20:42 AM
Posts: 1,783, Visits: 1,547 |
| Jordus (6/3/2008)
Alternatively one could use a WinPE disc and recover files that way.
This is off-topic for this thread, which is NOT about using WinPE to recover files; it is about using Ubuntu.
Since you're obviously such a "fan" of using WinPE, why not write your own "how-to" with step-by-step instructions on how to use WinPE to recover files? Please include (1) how to obtain a WinPE CD, or (2) how to create such a CD.
If you do that, I'll add that as a pinned post to this forum for all to see.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: XP Pro, Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Vista Business, Ubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
|
| |
| | | | Vista Beginner
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 6/26/2008 8:18:20 AM
Posts: 53, Visits: 64 |
| Funny the core of this thread is the recovery of files off a cratered vista install.
If someone cant manage that with MS tools, and have to resort to using another OS distro entirely then thats not anyones fault but their own.
I'm only adding input that keeps people from taking unnecessary steps.
One can find tutorials about every bit of WinPE all over the internet with a simple google search. |
| |
| | | |
Lead Forum Moderator
Group: Vista Forum Moderator
Last Login: Today @ 11:20:42 AM
Posts: 1,783, Visits: 1,547 |
| The topic of this thread refers specifically to using Ubuntu -- it's not a generic thread about machine recovery. Your post is off-topic, period.
I've asked you to consider creating your own thread that will provide the details for performing machine recovery using WinPE -- which you have effectively refused to do.
And, I'm not following you around. I'm a Lead Moderator here and I ready EVERY post, including yours. I'm not picking on your or anyone else.
Please let it drop. You seem to have a lot on the ball. Use that to help folks here, not arguing with me.
ASUS A832nSLI-Deluxe, AMD 64X2 4400 OC 2.4GHz, 3GB OCZ,
Running: XP Pro, Vista Ultimate 32-bit, Vista Business, Ubuntu 7.10, Ubuntu 8.04 LTS
|
| |
| |
|