computer screen goes black after windows logo

[Forest]

ok ive done that now for the AV

[peterb]

Grteat - most important bit really - saving the data! (Turned into a bit of a saga!! )

[Forest]

u are a legend lol without you i would have had alot of writting to do ! so is it possible to rescue my Hard drive on linux ? or does it really need to be wipped ? ive backed all important files to memory stick, i was wondering if i Virus scan harddrive and clean it up, could i transfer all filed to another harddrive beacuse i have 1, its a bit smaller but yh could hold everyhting, then when i wipe plop it all back ?

Forest

[peterb]

Yes - you have a working operating system that is independent of the hard drive, however you do need some working storage, so you could use another usb stick and download an AV program - such as F-prot. Run the update for it and then use that to scan/clean your windows hard drive - however there is a bit of Linux learning to do for that as some of the operations are command line driven.

However I think that you would probably be better installing a Windows OS on your small hard drive. make two partitions on it - one for the OS, and one for the data - then you have your data in three places - the original drive (which we know is suspect, the USB drive and a working copy on the windows drive.

You can then decide what to do with the original hard drive. You could mount it as a slave drive (is it IDE) and virus scan it, but if all the useful data has been extracted from it, I'd be inclined to just wipe it completely and reuse it for whatever. Once it is wiped, you could use your knoppix disk to clone the smaller drive to the big one again. You can also use the knoppix disk to wipe the large hard drive - but don't do that until you have a working OS system on the other drive - and your data is copied onto it.

Glad it worked out - and who knows - you may decide to investigate Linux in greater depth whne you have time!

[Forest]

ive been using it for a while now and ive really fell for it, i think windows is alot simpler (maybe beacuse ive used it all my life) but i really like the interface, right ive got a fine running windows on SAY B hardrive, and problem hard drive say A. is there any software on linux to copy A to B ? or is it best to make a folder in B and copy all of A into it. ive got both attached to this computer. im about to Virus check it now. so when all A is in B i wipe A and then transfer B to A lol isnt this fun. . . . .

Forest

[peterb]

If you are in a graphical environment, you can drag and drop the files you want to save from one to the other.

presumably one drive is the dodgy one - what has the other one got on it? If you have an operating system on it (Windows) you are reaklly better off copying the files off the dodgy disk onto a USB stick, then copying the files off the USB stick using the windows system. It is possible to use Linux to write to an NTFS system, but if you are not familiar with linux and the file system then it is possible to make a mistake and lose the data.

Your hard disk is probably mounted as /dev/hda1 - if there are other partitions they will be shown as /dev/hda2 and so on/ The USB stick will probably be shown as /dev/sda1. if you open a window (double click) on the hda drive, you will see the files. Just drag and drop them onto the USB stick icon - or you can click on the usb stick icon and drag and drop into the window that will open up.

[Forest]

ok, i tried dargging files into the other harddrive and it didnt like it, and my memory stick really isnt big enough to hold what i want it to hold (music, save games, dvds etc) i might have to get a external HD ... i will play with it today, thank

Forest

[peterb]

If you get an external drive for fioe transfer, format it on a windows machine before you connect it to the machine running linux. And format it for FAT 32. (It is possible to format a disk to FAT on a Linux machine, but its back to the command line again to do it - and while Linux will write to NT file systems, from the point of view of filke storage and transfer, FAT is a lot simpler)

[Forest]

kk great, yh back to the linux command line why does linux use command lines for everything, i can see why windows is prefered. is there a advantage of linux over windows ?

[peterb]

kk great, yh back to the linux command line why does linux use command lines for everything, i can see why windows is prefered. is there a advantage of linux over windows ?

Yes - lots! Choice of Guis etc, very stable, good at multi-tasking.

However whikle the Gui is fine for general use as a user (you can do 90% of most tasks in the Gui - even system admin) some rare tasks are done in the command line - and the command line gives far more flexibility and speed.

As a computer owner you have two roles - one is as a user - web browsing, word processing - using applications. the other is as an administrator - housekeeping, installing applications, configuration etc. This is true whatever operating system you are using.

However Windows (on a home system) tends to blur the distinctions - which is why many users just use administrator accounts for every day useage - VERY bad security! I would bet that you run with admin privileges - which means that if it was a virus that infected your computer, it too execduted with admin privileges, which gives it potential control over everything.

Linux tends to enforce the distinction between the two - I have one admin account - which I use only for admin tasks, and a low privilege user account - which I use on a daily basis. However I can open a terminal window in my user account - switch to root, and execute a command line for admin purposes and then close the window without logging off - it is just very flexible - but does take time and effort to master (and I am NOT a linux master or guru)

Strictly speaking, Linux refers to the kernel of the operating system - which is suppoted by lots of little programs (like format, or directory listing) that do one thing - but very well. These programs, together with teh kernel, form a distribution. Some of those utility programs have graphical front ends, others don't, so you run them in a termibal window at the command line. It isn't difficult, just a different way of working.

To format a floppy on my system, the command line would be

mkdosfs -F 16 /dev/fd0

which translated is

mkdosfs means makedosfilesystem

-F 16 means make it fat 16

/dev/fd0 means device floppydisk 0

but there are lots of options - fat 12, fat 32, native Linux filesystem (ext2, ext3), Atari file systems - and many many more.

However - this is not the place for a linux tutorial (not that I am qualified to give one) but if you do decide to explore a linux distro - invest in a good book to guide you through the first stages - it may cost £20 or so - but well worth it.

[Forest]

so u use linux over windows ? arr so for windows owners, they really should have two acounts, a every day one for:

surfing
games
word etc

and a admin acount for installing files, cleaning the "house" and looking after it ?

[peterb]

Yes and yes!

[Forest]

well my Windows disk just arrived in the post sooo im gonna wipe the hard drive, i will lose all my music and videos and save games but, but ...... it has to be done,

Forest

[peterb]

Didn't you get anything off using the live CD? One option (maybe a bit late now) would be to create a second partition on the disk and move all the stuff ypu want to save there, there install windows on the old partition. Depends how easy to recreate the music collection etc.

[Forest]

uhm 600 songs ...... all borrowed, etc . . . . . couple i own, uhm i might use some software and dump them on my second computer and then its got a hard copy and when my computer has been rescued i could use "idump" (fantastic software, just get a friend to bring there i pod around and u can steal all there songs) . . . .save games, i probably can resuce on memory stick, if i empty it on other computer. videos, well i can always re add them, dont bother me as much as the music. . .

Forest

[Splash]

uhm 600 songs ...... all borrowed, limewire etc . . . . . couple i own, uhm i might use some software and dump them on my second computer and then its got a hard copy and when my computer has been rescued i could use "idump" (fantastic software, just get a friend to bring there i pod around and u can steal all there songs) . . . .save games, i probably can resuce on memory stick, if i empty it on other computer. videos, well i can always re add them, dont bother me as much as the music. . .

Forest

Just a pointer - I'd be very careful about advocating piracy around here.