TSGL: Rescue data

[Alan Mitchell]

Two suggestions:

1. If the problem is that the MBR is blown, you can try to open into Safe
Mode Command Prompt and try the following:

Format c: /mbr

This undocumented command replaces the primary MBR with its backup.

2: PC World mag this month recommends burning a copy of Puppy Linux to a CD
(you obviously need another, working system to do this). But it recommends
an external hard drive also. If you're using the CD drive for the programs,
I can understand why they wouldn't support burning to the device from which
they run.

After several confusing times of doing this, I broke down and purchased and
external drive enclosure (got mine on sale at MicroCenter for $9.99 after
rebate) and I keep it around just for situations like this. Either I can pop
the bad drive in the enclosure and see if I can get access using USB and
another, functioning system, or I just pop in an old hard drive and copy the
files to it.

Alan

PS Giveaway of the Day recently had a utility package that was specifically
designed to recover partitions on a USB external hard drive, but I'm fairly
sure you can find similar utility software on sourceforge.net.

-----Original Message-----
From: list-bounces at tsgserver.com [mailto:list-bounces at tsgserver.com] On
Behalf Of Don Penlington
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 7:15 AM
To: Tech Support Guy Mailing List
Subject: TSGL: Rescue data

I have a club computer which won't boot into XP. It won't even boot into
Safe Mode. I can bring up the boot menu, but it just keeps looping back to
the boot menu. Before trying to rescue it, I'd like to burn some of the data
to CD before messing it up any further.

None of the rescue disks I have---Bart PE, Ultimate boot CD, Avira Rescue,
Acronis, (and a few others) seem to have any burning software on them as far
as I can see. I can read the current HD.

Does anyone know of a quick and easy way to burn the data short of removing
and slaving the disk onto another computer? Perhaps some other rescue CD?

Don Penlington
 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html


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