Linux Live CDs

Posts Tagged ‘repair cd’

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I have a problem with the Windows XP OS installed on my computer, I just don’t know what it is. Everything is fine until the account log in screen. I log in and the only thing on screen is an empty desktop and it won’t do nothing else. It stays that way and nothing works, not even the taskbar shows. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete and also holding windows key and r at the same time, nothing happened with either. I have a lot of important and valuable stuff on it’s hard disk and I can’t get it and I don’t have a back up of it, is there a way I can recover it? I lost my installation/recovery/repair CD. I tried booting up in safe mode and also with the last known good configuration, none of them worked either. I tried booting it up with a Linux live CD but didn’t work either, it kept showing the following error messages:

Buffer I/O error on device hdc, logical block XXXXX (the XXXXX is a number that kept changing and in different patterns every time)

hdc: error code: 0×70 sense_key: 0×03 asc: 0×11 ascq: 0×00

SQUASHFS error: sb_bread failed reading block 0x2e6a8
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read fragment cache block [b9a7c42]
SQUASHFS error: Unable to read page, block b9a7c42, size 24ef (the number b9a7c42, it always starts with it but after a while it chages it too and also in different patterns every time)

I’m thinking that if it’s not Windows it may be a BIOS bug, what do I do about it if that’s the case? I wanted to update it but I don’t know my motherboard’s info.
I also tried testing the memory with the Ubuntu CD but when it finished checking it, it restarted again and again and solved nothing.
what can I do? How can I solve my problem?? Sorry for deleting my old question about this, didn’t do it intentionally lol. Please help!!
How do I take out the hard drive? How do I move my files from the hard drive to a different drive without using Windows?? Thanks for the first 2 answers, I really care only about my files, after having them safe and can format or do whatever to the computer? If you guys can please extend your answers to help me with this. Or of course any other new answer explaining me this or giving me another way to solve my problem is welcome, thanks.
Where in my computer is the hard drive located? I have a laptop.
The computer where I would transfer my files is a desktop.

I repair Windows machines often with KNOPPIX; it’s the easiest way for me to get a clean OS running so I can blow away viruses. However, KNOPPIX 5.1.1 shows its age, as it failed to work on a computer I recently went to service due to the computer being “too new.” KNOPPIX 5.2 is a DVD-only release and so is not particularly useful to me. I’m also looking for a USB-based self-contained Linux. The problem is that the number of choices are staggering: SLAX, DSL, MEPIS…it’s hard to pick one. I’d be primarily using it for command-prompt-based repairs on Windows machines, but I’d need X11 and a browser like Firefox available as well. Having ntfsprogs and ntfs-3g are crucial, and having the “dd_rescue” command would be a very good thing as well. Failing all this, having a guide to rolling my own would be a nice thing to have. I’ll be booting this on anything from a Pentium II to a brand new Core 2 Duo, so a RECENT kernel and drivers is fairly vital.

So, what “live” distros should I check out in my search? And please don’t say “Ubuntu.” It’s the worst Linux distro I’ve ever seen in my life, and horribly slow on top of all that.