File system question

[campamax]

Hi everybody. I am new here, this is my first post: I need help from someone (much) more expert than me...

I have an old Windows NT PC (FAT32) which does not start anymore. I booted it with Linux (both Puppy and SystemRescueCD manage to run with 256 MB RAM) and I discovered that the WINNT folder is missing, but I found a 'WINNT' file which, if shown through 'cat', looks a lot like a folder (i.e. lots of control characters and lots of filenames).

My question is: does a way exist to make the OS 'use' this file as a directory, or to 'convert' it to a directory?

Thanks to everyone.
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campamax

[jdkaye]

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to do with winnt but your description:

I found a 'WINNT' file which, if shown through 'cat', looks a lot like a folder (i.e. lots of control characters and lots of filenames)

could refer to a binary file rather than a folder. Do you know if Windows NT does contain a file called "WINNT"? Did the file names you saw in the cat output all contain WINNT in their path?
ciao,
jdk

[campamax]

Hi.

I looked into another PC and I could not find the samefile.
This is why I suppose that binary file actually is what remains of the 'folder', meaning the list of files used by the file system.

I just asked here to know if someone knows a 'Linux way' to do this.

Thanks

[jdkaye]

Sorry, I don't really know anything about Windows are what you are trying to do. Do the filenames you see using cat resemble Windows system files? Are you looking for one file in particular?
jdk

[rcgreen]

There is a good chance that your winnt file is a directory.
There is probably some damage to the file system, and
that is why it appears as a normal file. If you really
want to save this data, Norton Utilities, and other products,
have bootable CDs that can attempt to analyze and
repair Windows file systems.

From within Linux, you may have some luck with fsck
the normal file system checker. It may have an option for
FAT and NTFS.

[jdkaye]

From within Linux, you may have some luck with fsck
the normal file system checker. It may have an option for
FAT and NTFS.

Indeed there is. There is fsck.vfat and fsck.msdos which may be of help.
jdk

[campamax]

Thanks a lot to everybody: tomorrow I'll check the fsck command you proposed.

I'll let you know if I manage to fix the fs through Linux.

Regards
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campamax

[campamax]

Hello all.

Sorry to say fsck.vfat did not recover what I needed.

Looking foa a new way.....

Thanks everybody anyway.
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campamax