[numeric]

Hey everyone,

I'm kinda running blind on this as I've never had to do it before so any help would be much appreciated!

I've had a couple of old PC's sitting around here gathering dust for a while now, so I've finally decided to put them to good use and build a Linux server and firewall. Most of the network is planned out and I'm ready to start work on the firewall, which is currently living as an old Dell 8100 (It wasn't my pc! honest!) with Windows 2k installed.

Currently, Dellboy is pretty much crippled. I'm not sure if it's a virus or just sloppy housekeeping, but it's running seriously slow and is completely unusable. This wouldn't normally be too much of a problem but there are family photo's on the machine that I would like to recover if it's possible.

Seeing as Windows is crippled I'm pretty much left with either using the command line or booting from a CD-ROM and copying the files to a pen drive. One of the drives in the Dell *might* be a CD-R but I'm not sure so assume its not for now.

Any suggestions for a solution? I'd really hate to loose those photo's without exhausting all other options available. I unfortunately don't have any of the original OS disc's so I'm guessing Linux is pretty much my only option. Any links to tutorials/how-to's and other resources would be greatly appreciated, as would general advice.

Cheers,

-N

This post has been edited by numeric: 22 March 2009 - 06:36 AM

[lockdown]

numeric, on 22 Mar, 2009 - 05:35 AM, said:

Hey everyone,

I'm kinda running blind on this as I've never had to do it before so any help would be much appreciated!

I've had a couple of old PC's sitting around here gathering dust for a while now, so I've finally decided to put them to good use and build a Linux server and firewall. Most of the network is planned out and I'm ready to start work on the firewall, which is currently living as an old Dell 8100 (It wasn't my pc! honest!) with Windows 2k installed.

Currently, Dellboy is pretty much crippled. I'm not sure if it's a virus or just sloppy housekeeping, but it's running seriously slow and is completely unusable. This wouldn't normally be too much of a problem but there are family photo's on the machine that I would like to recover if it's possible.

Seeing as Windows is crippled I'm pretty much left with either using the command line or booting from a CD-ROM and copying the files to a pen drive. One of the drives in the Dell *might* be a CD-R but I'm not sure so assume its not for now.

Any suggestions for a solution? I'd really hate to loose those photo's without exhausting all other options available. I unfortunately don't have any of the original OS disc's so I'm guessing Linux is pretty much my only option. Any links to tutorials/how-to's and other resources would be greatly appreciated, as would general advice.

Cheers,

-N

Best advice I think, is somewhat you already suggest of booting from CD and coping files. You could uses a program such as BartPE (Free), which I normally uses for this purpose. To what you back that information up to is another matter. Normally I suggest you purchase another Hard Drive, can pick up a 40gb for next to nothing these days, and back the information up to that. That will prevent any driver issues with pen drives/usb drives.

Another route, that might work is doing a file share from another system to the crippled computer. However since its already running to slow to do tasks, that probally wont work due to speed.

[numeric]

thanks for the reply. I'd never heard of BartPE before - took a quick look at the website and it looks like a pretty decent app. I want to avoid buying a hard disk if possible though - I'm already spending out on some additional hardware for the network that the firewall is going to be installed in so I'm trying to keep costs down for the time being. Hopefully I can find a way to make use of my pen drive or a CD-R.

[DeCompile]

Quickest and easiest solution is to just remove the hard drive from your Dell and place it into another computer.

Make sure the other computer has up to date virus software on it though.

Then just copy and paste.

[CrazySpai]

To elaborate on DeCompile's suggestion: Take the corrupt/slow hard drive and put it into another machine, I recommend throwing it into your linux computer in order to cut down the risk of infection if it is in fact a virus. Make sure in your bios that the slow hard drive is not set as first to boot, throw it down to the last slot if possible. Then in linux you should see it as another hard drive. Open it up and transfer any files over. I am assuming you know the structure of Windows as you are assembling a firewall on a computer.
<guest help>
For any guests reading this: The Windows XP and previous OS's have all "Documents and Desktop" items under x:\Documents and Settings\username\ x being the drive letter and username being well.. your user name. Inside that folder you will see tons of different folders, Desktop and My Documents are there. All your files inside My Documents and your desktop will be there. For Windows Vista, your documents and desktop items are x:\Users\username\ x being the drive letter, username you get it. Inside there will be Pictures,Music, Documents, Downloads, all the normal folders. Your documents will all be here assuming you saved them here.
</guest help>