Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Linux, Microsoft, Open Source
Linux as a Windows system recovery option
by Ryan Carter Jul 13th 2006 at 3:10PM
I have had the problem a thousand times, where one of the sales reps I support comes to me and says that that they can't access Windows or that they get the blue screen repeatedly, or their computer implodes in some other such fashion. They are usually quite distraught until I introduce them to their new best friend. I hold up a live CD containing none other than a Linux distribution. Ubuntu is my favorite, but I also enjoy working with Knoppix, DSL (Damn Small Linux), or PClinuxOS. Any of these Linux distros can be a great recovery tool for Windows users. Each has it's strengths over the others, so you'll have to decide which is your favorite. You boot from the Live CD, then you can run anything from the CD (coupled with a RAMdrive) and copy Windows files to a USB hard disk or burn them to CD. I have found that doing this is often faster and easier than trying to tell what went horribly wrong in Windows and using the recovery console. In the corporate world I can save files, then simply wipe out the hard disk and start over. Talk about making my life easier, not to mention my user gets to retain their vast library of email and presentations for future use. It is a quick and dirty way to recover from a Windows installation gone bad.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
The Tick said 4:14PM on 7-13-2006
No kidding! I did this just yesterday with Ubuntu to fix a GRUB boot-loader problem. It even has a partition manager. What an incredibly useful, and free, tool.
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Keith Kamisugi said 4:24PM on 7-13-2006
An Ubuntu live CD is the one disc I take with me when I travel with my laptop. Shortly before a recent trip, my laptop hard drive started making "I'm going to die soon" noises. I knew that if the drive went cuckoo, I could boot with Ubuntu and at least work on a fully functional OS temporarily.
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Chris Wickersham said 4:58PM on 7-13-2006
I will say that I am also a fan of EBCD at http://ebcd.pcministry.com/ . There's even a nice tool there to reset the windows password if you do something dumb like I did last week. I put a fresh install of windows on my sister's computer last week (which she was using while she waited for her newly refurbished powerbook to arrive) and sent it back to her with a password set. Unfortunately, I didn't use one of my 'standard' passwords in this case and neglected to record it. So she got the computer and was completely unable to use it (I live in a different state). Frustrating until I told her how to make an EBCD.
Cheers!
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james said 7:14PM on 7-13-2006
Another advantage to having a new Intel Mac running XP, built in recovery tool called OSX.
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Polara said 7:54PM on 7-13-2006
Linux CDs are great if you need to fix your Linux box and could be used to grab some files off a hosed Windows drive. But better to use BartPE - http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/ or its big brother, UBCD4Win - http://www.ubcd4win.com/ for your Windows headaches. Both are made just for this purpose and can run from a CD or even from a USB flash key if your machine supports this.
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olaf said 4:30AM on 7-14-2006
I used knoppix yesterday to rescue some data from a laptop. the great thing with knoppix it has an ftpserver deamon running so i just fpted all the files from the broken harddrive.
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Bryan said 7:30AM on 7-14-2006
This seems a little complcated. I always pulled the hard drive out, and made it a slave drive on a friends machine. I could back it up and format it in no time. I am going to make the Ubuntu jump this week though.
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