Recovering files from unbooable PC

[seeohdeewhy]

Hi everyone, got a bit of a problem... I have a dell m1530 latop, vista ultimate with a 320gb hdd and 4 gigs ram, anyway when i start my computer it goes to load vista and i quickly get BSOD and it shuts down, its not detecting my partition with windows on it. When i go to repair with the disk the partition wont show up and i used the driver disk that came with my pc for my hard drive but that didnt work. i got a kubuntu disk and loaded it fine(running off the disk because installing it will format the drive... im pretty sure...), then i can see my files from windows, except everything in the document and settings folder (which has all my important fles in it), probably for security reasons i dunno. I also have a 250GB external drive to move all my files to from my PC's hdd, but i cannot open the drive because windows didnt shut down correctly. So i just need to access all my files and be able to get them to the external drive, then i will just reinstall windows, thanks to anyone who can help

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

We have to check partition structure of your Hard disk first. Boot up from Kubuntu CD, open Terminal and execute this

sudo fdisk -l
df -h

Post output here.

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[seeohdeewhy]

Hi and thanks for the reply, i cant go on the internet with the broken pc, because kubuntu is just running off the disk. I had to type everything from the terminal from that pc to this one so here it is sorry if theres any mistakes, i think its good though.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylanders
Units=cylanders of 16065 * 512=8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x67e0e8c1

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/sda1 1 12 96358+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 13 1318 10489555 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 1381 38914 301993665 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 249.8GB, 249849445888 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30375 cylanders
Units=cylanders of 16065 * 512=8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2052474d

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.


Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/sdb1 ? 410 119791 958924038+ 70 DiskSecure Multi-Boot
Partition 1 does not end on a cylander boundary.

/dev/sdb2 ? 121585 234786 909287957+ 43 Unknown
Partition 2 does not end on a cylander boundary.

/dev/sdb3 ? 14052 14052 5 72 Unknown
Partition 3 does not end on a cylander boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs 1.8G 2.0M 1.8G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile
tmpfs 1.8G 2.0M 1.8G 1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-7-generic/volatile
tmpfs 1.8G 0 1.8G 0% /lib/init/rw
varrun 1.8G 88K 1.8G 1% /var/run
varlock 1.8G 0 1.8G 0% /var/lock
udev 1.8G 2.9M 1.8G 1% /dev
tmpfs 1.8G 0 1.8G 0% /dev/shm
rootfs 1.8G 27M 1.8G 2% /
/dev/scd0 700M 700M 0 100% /cdrom
/dev/loop0 678M 678M 0 100% /rofs
tmpfs 1.8G 8.0K 1.8G 1% /tmp