PC Laptop - want to salvage files

[bloodline]

Get a Knoppix live CD, and a USB Harddrive. Boot the machine with Knoppix, and copy the data from the Machine's internal drive to the USB drive :-)

[bloodline]

X-ray wrote:
@ Bloodline

You are the mutt's nuts, my good man. I am downloading Knoppix Live as we speak. Should take me 50 minutes at 233kb/s. I already have an external USB/Firewire drive and I'll see what I can do. (I'm absolutely clueless about Linux and Knoppix, so this could be interesting).

You'll have no problem with Linux, it boots into a standard Desktop and you'll pick it up in about 4 seconds. I've used Knoppix and my USB drive a few times to save valuble data from dead windows laptops.  

But if she's formated the drive, it's probably game over.

[bloodline]

X-ray wrote:
Well, I have the Knoppix ISO downloaded and I have burned it to CD. Now...I changed boot order in BIOS to CD first, and the CD boots and I get the Knoppix screen with 'Press enter to boot from CD'. There is quite a bit of CD activity after that but then nothing. Black screen. This happens on my XP desktop with 2gb of RAM, even if I select the option of load all to RAM. Tried the CD on the laptop: same deal. Black screen. I am looking for clues online and in the manual but so far I don't know what the problem is  :-?

It does take a while to boot... but you should see the usual *nix console during boot...

[bloodline]

I aways have a FAT32 partition on my drives as NTFS is totally unportable.