[BenPaylor]

Hey guys,
So Vista reared its ugly head and will not boot anymore. I borrowed a Kubuntu disc from my friend to boot off and here I am!

I have tried following a number of guides to access my old Windows files (I have an external that I can copy them to and then use recovery mode to get my Vista up and running again....) but none of them are working! I am not sure why!

I havn't installed the Kubuntu, and just running off booting from the disc so I think this might be the problem? I can use the Konsole to put in all the commands they say, but none of them work like the guides say they will! Am I missing something installed? or? Any advice is much appreciated!

Can someone direct me to a guide or help me through this process? Linux is completely foreign to me and even installing Skype is giving me problems!

Thanks,
Ben

[BenPaylor]

jclark.org - HOWTO Recover Files from a Non-Bootable Windows PC using Ubuntu Live
This seems like a good one, but right off the bat it doesn't work.
"Run the Ubuntu Disks Manager. From the system menu bar, choose System | Administration | Disks. In the Disks Manager, find the Hard Disk icon that represents your Windows drive. It is usually /dev/hda. You may see other Hard Disks that you don’t recognize, these are virtual devices created by the LiveCD."

I don't have a system menu bar and can't find this? Am I running a different system than this guy? How do I check what system I am running?

thanks!

[BenPaylor]

I am on Ubuntu 7.04

Why do I not have the options that this guy is talking about?

[BenPaylor]

How To Access Your Windows Hard Drive From Ubuntu
Or this guide seems like it would be perfect
but as soon as I get to this step....
ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt$ sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda /mnt/windrive -o "umask=022"
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda,
missing codepage or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
that happens!

whats going on?

[BenPaylor]

/dev/sda being the name of my drive according to qtparted

[barks]

hi,
this all sounds complicated?
is the drive not listed in places>computer?

[devils casper]

You have to mount all partitions manually. Boot up Kubuntu CD, open Konsole and execute this

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

[BenPaylor]

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1020 8193118+ 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 * 1021 10239 74051617+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 10240 19457 74043585 7 HPFS/NTFS

Let me know what to do next!

Cheers,
Ben

[devils casper]

First partition /dev/sda1 is marked as unknown. Is it Recovery Partition of Vista?
Create two mount_points ( folders ).

cd media
sudo mkdir sda2 sda3

Open /etc/fstab file with root privileges.

gksu gedit /etc/fstab

Add these two lines at the end of file.

/dev/sda2  /media/sda2  ntfs  defaults,umask=0  0  0
/dev/sda3  /media/sda3  ntfs  defaults,umask=0  0  0

Save file and reboot machine. Vista partitions will be available in /media/sda2 and sda3 folders.

Ubuntu supports NTFS read access out of box. If you want to enable write access too, Install ntfs-3g package. Replace ntfs with ntfs-3g in /etc/fstab file after installing nfts-3g package.