First of all you need to know where your Linux OS is installed to. that is what drive it is currently living on. Bear in mind that Linux formats the drive as HFS rather than Fat/Fat32 or NTFS. ( These are the file systems used by various Operating Systems).
So HFS Partitions are not seen by windows, so its hidden.
To remove the partitions of Linux in WindowsXP go to your 'Control panel' > Admistrative Tools > Computer Managment
Open 'Disk Management' and you will see your Linux drives recognised as 'Unknown Partition' plus the status of the drive. Bearing in mind you know what partition and disk you installed to it will be easier to recognise as the drive/partition where you had installed it to.
Once you have identifed the drives, 'right-Click' on the drive/partiton and select 'Delete Logical Drive'
Once you have followed this through, you will now have free space.
This next part is very important. Once you have formatted the drive, re format it as your required file system type. either Fat32 or NTFS. Now the important part is coming up !
Fixing your Master Boot Record to make Windows Bootable again.
Have a Windows Boot disk with all the basic DOS Commands loaded on to the disk. A standard Windows 98/Me Boot Disk will work too.
Type in the DOS command :
e.g, from your C:\
fdisk /mbr
Or use your Windows XP run the recovery console, pick which xp install you would like to boot in to (usually you will pick #1)
then type: fixmbr. Answer Y to the dialoge.
Your master boot record will now be restored and Windows XP will be bootable once again. Your System will be restored with your original boot loader that you got with Windows XP.
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Showing posts with label tip. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tip. Show all posts
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Recover data from a quick- erased CDRW/DVDRW disc
Procedure used to recover data from a quick-erased CD/DVD-RW disc
1. Make a file of exactly the size of the cd/dvdrw disc's capacity.
(this step may not be needed)
2. With Nero I created a new project and added the file to it so that I have the disc filled. I gues you can also fill up the disc with other files.
The reason why I fill the disc is because I want Nero to make a session that uses the entire disc. Like I wrote earlier in this thread I experienced that my CD/DVD-Drive refuses to read off the disc beyond the session's boundaries. When you quick-erase a disc there is no session anymore so the drive will not read at all. Burning a new session will overwrite the data and burning only a small session will NOT make the drive read the other data that is still on the disc.
The reason why I used the one big file is so that I could later on recognize which part of the disc was overwritten by this file because this file contained all zeros (0 x00).
3. I pressed burn and selected disc-at-once. Then while Nero was burning the leadin I pressed cancel. My CD/DVD-Drive finished writing the lead-in and Nero reported an error.
This is what was accomplished however: Now the disc contains a session that says that the used disc size is the complete disc. Nero did not get to writing file because I cancelled it. Good thing because I don't want Nero to write any files because my old data will get overwritten!
I gues it works the same with different writing software. Another method that I used during a test was simply press the reset button of the computer when the burning software was done with writing the lead-in and started with the files.
4. I had to restart the computer after cancelling burning.
With the cdrw disc inserted I saw in "my computer" that windows recognized that the disc was 650MB, clicking on it gave an error. Good so far!
Now with IsoBuster you can extract the sectors from a disc to a file. This is what I did.
I gues that if you have data- recovery software at this point it will be usefull because now (if all went well;)) the CD/DVD-Drive WILL read data from the entire disc. Anyway, I used ISO-Buster because the files that I needed to recover where a bit odd for nowadays (.XM,.S3 M,.MP3):
In IsoBuster I had to do several steps:
Step 1: Find out from and to which sector the drive will read
By choosing "Sector View" you can look at any given sector.
Here I found out what the first and the last sectors where that are readable. (Hint I used the method for the old game: "Gues a number below 100, I'll tell if it is higher or lower than what you gues")
Step 2: Extract the actual sectors
By choosing "Extract From-To" you can extract any given range of sectors to a file. My disc was a data-disc so I choose the first extraction type "User data, 2048 bytes/block...".
In the end I got a.tao file which was about 650MB. I ran several programs on it to look for files inside a file by searching for file-header-paterns:
1 . Multi Ripper 2.80 (for DOS, for the.XM files. It does many other file formats as well (jpg,png, bmp,wav,etc,etc +100 ). Try google with this query: Multi Ripper 2.80. I still had the file from good old days but I saw several good search results)
2 . Winamp for mp3.
Winamp will scan any file when you give it the extension.mp3 and play it as one big song (so I renamed the.tao file to.mp3 ). I used the discwriter to get a.wav and the Adobe Audition to manually cut and save my songs. I looked at the MP3 file format and it is hard to find an mp3 file in a big file because it has no clear header just a bunch of mpeg-frames in most cases for me. A lot of my files had no ID3 v2 or ID3 v1 tags... But after a couple of hours I recovered everything.
Finally a list of used stuff:
Software:
- IsoBuster v1.9 and above
- Nero 6.8 and above
- Multi Ripper 2.80 and above
- WinAmp v5.02 and above
- Windows XP Pro NL (patched up)
Hardware:
- NEC DVDRW ND1300 A 1.06
Disc:
- some old 4 speed CDRW/DVDRW
1. Make a file of exactly the size of the cd/dvdrw disc's capacity.
(this step may not be needed)
2. With Nero I created a new project and added the file to it so that I have the disc filled. I gues you can also fill up the disc with other files.
The reason why I fill the disc is because I want Nero to make a session that uses the entire disc. Like I wrote earlier in this thread I experienced that my CD/DVD-Drive refuses to read off the disc beyond the session's boundaries. When you quick-erase a disc there is no session anymore so the drive will not read at all. Burning a new session will overwrite the data and burning only a small session will NOT make the drive read the other data that is still on the disc.
The reason why I used the one big file is so that I could later on recognize which part of the disc was overwritten by this file because this file contained all zeros (0 x00).
3. I pressed burn and selected disc-at-once. Then while Nero was burning the leadin I pressed cancel. My CD/DVD-Drive finished writing the lead-in and Nero reported an error.
This is what was accomplished however: Now the disc contains a session that says that the used disc size is the complete disc. Nero did not get to writing file because I cancelled it. Good thing because I don't want Nero to write any files because my old data will get overwritten!
I gues it works the same with different writing software. Another method that I used during a test was simply press the reset button of the computer when the burning software was done with writing the lead-in and started with the files.
4. I had to restart the computer after cancelling burning.
With the cdrw disc inserted I saw in "my computer" that windows recognized that the disc was 650MB, clicking on it gave an error. Good so far!
Now with IsoBuster you can extract the sectors from a disc to a file. This is what I did.
I gues that if you have data- recovery software at this point it will be usefull because now (if all went well;)) the CD/DVD-Drive WILL read data from the entire disc. Anyway, I used ISO-Buster because the files that I needed to recover where a bit odd for nowadays (.XM,.S3 M,.MP3):
In IsoBuster I had to do several steps:
Step 1: Find out from and to which sector the drive will read
By choosing "Sector View" you can look at any given sector.
Here I found out what the first and the last sectors where that are readable. (Hint I used the method for the old game: "Gues a number below 100, I'll tell if it is higher or lower than what you gues")
Step 2: Extract the actual sectors
By choosing "Extract From-To" you can extract any given range of sectors to a file. My disc was a data-disc so I choose the first extraction type "User data, 2048 bytes/block...".
In the end I got a.tao file which was about 650MB. I ran several programs on it to look for files inside a file by searching for file-header-paterns:
1 . Multi Ripper 2.80 (for DOS, for the.XM files. It does many other file formats as well (jpg,png, bmp,wav,etc,etc +100 ). Try google with this query: Multi Ripper 2.80. I still had the file from good old days but I saw several good search results)
2 . Winamp for mp3.
Winamp will scan any file when you give it the extension.mp3 and play it as one big song (so I renamed the.tao file to.mp3 ). I used the discwriter to get a.wav and the Adobe Audition to manually cut and save my songs. I looked at the MP3 file format and it is hard to find an mp3 file in a big file because it has no clear header just a bunch of mpeg-frames in most cases for me. A lot of my files had no ID3 v2 or ID3 v1 tags... But after a couple of hours I recovered everything.
Finally a list of used stuff:
Software:
- IsoBuster v1.9 and above
- Nero 6.8 and above
- Multi Ripper 2.80 and above
- WinAmp v5.02 and above
- Windows XP Pro NL (patched up)
Hardware:
- NEC DVDRW ND1300 A 1.06
Disc:
- some old 4 speed CDRW/DVDRW
How to recover MOST of scratched CD/DVD data discs
For dvd do the same thing as that in cd
I learn an old thecnique to how to recover damaged or scratched disks
with some lost of data. In this case i have one borrowed game - MAX PAYNE 2
with a chunck of 4 mb lost with a scratch in CD1 Install. Here we cover some
special thecniques of how to create a full working CD from the scratched one.
First some tools will be needed:
1 . Alcohol 120%
2. UltraISO
3 . Windows XP/2000
3. Small piece of cotton
4. Dry cleaner paper
5. Finally, oil for cooking.
First step - preparing the CD
Get the cotton and drop some water, start cleaning vertically the surface of CD.
Do it 3 times and dry the water with a piece of dry cleaner paper. With a new piece
of cotton, drop some oil for cooking and start to wet the surface like you are
washing the CD with the oil. Dry carefully now. Some particles of oil will stay on the
microsurface of the scrath. It's okay. Seems the oil helps the laser of the CD/DVD driver
to read the surface again. Sure this will work with small unreadable scratchs - some hard
scratchs loose parts of the surface of the CD where we have data and it's lost forever.
But if it is loosed try anyway. Whith this tip 80% of the small scratched CD's coud be
recovered.
Second Step - testing the CD
With Alcohol 120% make an ISO - image making wizard - and lets see if the app can
read the loosed surface. In my case Alcohol 120 % had recovered 60% of the data.
This is not enough. Have tryed other appz, they do not recover all the data. But the
CD/DVD driver laser CAN recover all data in this case. the data is still there, what we do?
third step - making the new CD
With the main copy system of windows explorer you can do it. Just create one folder
with the same name of the CD label for future burn reference, and copy the CD content
to the folder. When the CD copy process find the scratch, in majority of the cases, it's
slow down the reading and will recover ALL loosed data.If not, it just tell you there's
an unreadable sector. In this case your CD is lost. But it's not my case, finally
windows explorer got all the data from the scratch and made a copy in the folder.
with the ultraISO, wrote the original CD label, drop the content of the folder and
save as Iso. You can Test the new CD just mounting the iso in the Alcohol 120%. In my
case i did ISO of the two discs from MAX PAYNE 2 and tested installing from the mounted
ISO. Works like a charm. I got the 4 mb lost again. So, I have burned the CD and now i
have a working copy from the scratched one.
Sounds too bizzarre, but works. Course you can jump the cleaning process and try to copy
the content with Windows explorer. But in my case did not work without oil...
I learn an old thecnique to how to recover damaged or scratched disks
with some lost of data. In this case i have one borrowed game - MAX PAYNE 2
with a chunck of 4 mb lost with a scratch in CD1 Install. Here we cover some
special thecniques of how to create a full working CD from the scratched one.
First some tools will be needed:
1 . Alcohol 120%
2. UltraISO
3 . Windows XP/2000
3. Small piece of cotton
4. Dry cleaner paper
5. Finally, oil for cooking.
First step - preparing the CD
Get the cotton and drop some water, start cleaning vertically the surface of CD.
Do it 3 times and dry the water with a piece of dry cleaner paper. With a new piece
of cotton, drop some oil for cooking and start to wet the surface like you are
washing the CD with the oil. Dry carefully now. Some particles of oil will stay on the
microsurface of the scrath. It's okay. Seems the oil helps the laser of the CD/DVD driver
to read the surface again. Sure this will work with small unreadable scratchs - some hard
scratchs loose parts of the surface of the CD where we have data and it's lost forever.
But if it is loosed try anyway. Whith this tip 80% of the small scratched CD's coud be
recovered.
Second Step - testing the CD
With Alcohol 120% make an ISO - image making wizard - and lets see if the app can
read the loosed surface. In my case Alcohol 120 % had recovered 60% of the data.
This is not enough. Have tryed other appz, they do not recover all the data. But the
CD/DVD driver laser CAN recover all data in this case. the data is still there, what we do?
third step - making the new CD
With the main copy system of windows explorer you can do it. Just create one folder
with the same name of the CD label for future burn reference, and copy the CD content
to the folder. When the CD copy process find the scratch, in majority of the cases, it's
slow down the reading and will recover ALL loosed data.If not, it just tell you there's
an unreadable sector. In this case your CD is lost. But it's not my case, finally
windows explorer got all the data from the scratch and made a copy in the folder.
with the ultraISO, wrote the original CD label, drop the content of the folder and
save as Iso. You can Test the new CD just mounting the iso in the Alcohol 120%. In my
case i did ISO of the two discs from MAX PAYNE 2 and tested installing from the mounted
ISO. Works like a charm. I got the 4 mb lost again. So, I have burned the CD and now i
have a working copy from the scratched one.
Sounds too bizzarre, but works. Course you can jump the cleaning process and try to copy
the content with Windows explorer. But in my case did not work without oil...
Friday, August 21, 2009
Disabling Unneeded Windows Features
There are likely Windows Features running on the computer you don't need. To see what these may be and make any changes you want:
Start / Control Panel
Programs and Features
Click on Turn Windows features on or off
It typically takes a little while for this window to populate
Hovering the mouse over an entry gives a short description of it
From here you can check or uncheck any entries you want.
For example, you may not need Windows Fax and Scan
Click the OK button when you are done
Start / Control Panel
Programs and Features
Click on Turn Windows features on or off
It typically takes a little while for this window to populate
Hovering the mouse over an entry gives a short description of it
From here you can check or uncheck any entries you want.
For example, you may not need Windows Fax and Scan
Click the OK button when you are done
Thursday, August 20, 2009
How to create screensaver shortcuts in Vista
Shortcuts in Windows are good,they save time and also are cool.Just think instead of clicking many times,you can accomplish specific tasks in a single click or a single hot key,wouldn't that increase productivity? Let us take a look at how to make a shortcut to launch any screensaver in Vista.In Windows,screensavers are having the file extension.scr.These files are located in Windows\system32 folder.
If you want a quick look at what kind of.scr files are there,navigate to command prompt ( Start > run > cmd) and type cd /windows/system32.
Once in the system folder,list the scr files with dir *.scr Suppose,I want to make a shortcut to launch the cool Aurora screensaver directly from my desktop.To do this,I create a shortcut that simply points to that particular.scr file. To make a new shortcut,right click on desktop (that's where I want the shortcut) and select New > Shortcut.
The path should be
%systemroot%\system32\Aur ora.scr /s
Name the shortcut and it will show up on the desktop.
To see if it is working,simply double click on it and screensaver will launch. All done...
If you want a quick look at what kind of.scr files are there,navigate to command prompt ( Start > run > cmd) and type cd /windows/system32.
Once in the system folder,list the scr files with dir *.scr Suppose,I want to make a shortcut to launch the cool Aurora screensaver directly from my desktop.To do this,I create a shortcut that simply points to that particular.scr file. To make a new shortcut,right click on desktop (that's where I want the shortcut) and select New > Shortcut.
The path should be
%systemroot%\system32\Aur ora.scr /s
Name the shortcut and it will show up on the desktop.
To see if it is working,simply double click on it and screensaver will launch. All done...
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