Justbill

Well, first off Thanks for the Help! I did finally get "Winternals Administrator's Pak" installed on my xp partition. Also the cd image on my desktop. Successfully burned the image. The disc booted fine on there computer, but same problem as befor, it didn't see anything on partition 1 (C: ). We have given up on this and wiped the drive. We are going to go with a Linux solution for this and install "Freespire", and see how that goes. Again, Thanks for the Help, I really appreciate it! Justbill

Nothing, absolutely nothing, on Gods green earth, SUCKS, as much as M$ Windows! That said, thanks for all the help! I finally did get the CD image on my xp (capitol letters left out intentionally) partition, and it burned an iso image succesfully (using BurnCDCC). But alas the tool did not work on there machine. The disc booted fine, but it did not see an operating system on the 54GB ntfs (capitol letters left out intentionally) partition. Amazing, because gparted saw it (the ntfs partition) with no problem. Proprietary operating systems, you can't live with them, but you can wipe the drive! We have given up on winxp (capitol letters left out intentionally), and have wiped the drive, and have opted for either "Freespire" or "Ubuntu Dapper". I am leaning towards "Freespire" initially for them, simply because it looks and feels a lot like a proprietary operating system that we are all familiar with, with out all the crappy proprietary crap (wow, did I say that). The one thing these friends of mine do enjoy, is downloading music from the internet. Oviously, a lot of the programs for this are written for ms windows (capitol letters left out intentionally), and some Disney movies for there son. I have never been much on the music downloads, or movies, for that matter. Does any one have a suggestion for an open source solution for this. I am sure there must be some, but I am looking for something easy to use for them (I'll take care of the installation). Danleff, thanks for all the help! Hey for a little irony here in this whole thing, if you remember back when I first joined this forum, I was whining and crying about how to get FC3 off my machine, so I could put ms windows (capitol letters left out intentionally) back on my machine. Now, I want nothing to do with ms (capitol letters left out intentionally). Again, Thanks for the help! Justbill

Thanks! I'll give that a try! Justbill

I was using the "freespire" live CD. More specifically gparted. I guess that was just a waste of money then, buying ERD Commander from that site? I mean, it did boot, after I burned the .bin &.cue files. I guess there is something to this that I just don't understand. If you think it will help, I will install it on my XP partition, and get something (nero) to burn it with. I do have a username, that is a number, that they assigned me. I wonder if that could be the activation key? I usually make the floppy rescue discs, but that particular day, I didn't have any floppy's, I have NEVER had a problem like this before with Partition Magic, so guess what I didn't do :-( I'll give it a try installing it on XP this evening, I'm really not sure how to do that, but, maybe there will be an autorun or something. Thanks for all the help Justbill

I bought a download from this place http://www.mainstoreonline.com/index.php Its called Cheap Soft at a low price. It cost $30.00 But so far I have not had ANY luck. I guess I don't understand the answer I got. I was going to copy the last couple of posts, and paste them here, but it is to much. If you dont mind, could you take a look over at NT Compatible, at this thread again, and see if you could maybe tell me where I have gone wrong here. I really don't use MS anymore at all, so I get a little confused when I have to boot XP and try to do this stuff. Was I supposed to install this on my XP, or just copy the cd1.bin & cd1.cue , and burn them as an image? This whole thing is turning into one big mess, reminds me why I hate MS windows so much! A budy of mine messed up his Suse install. All I had to do is run a couple of commands and do a rebuild tree, and boom he was back up and running. Thanks a bunch for any help Justbill

I have another quick question on this. I extracted the .zip file on my desktop in WinXP. So now I have another folder with the extracted files. Was I supposed to install this in XP, and then copy the installation to a disc? I tried just copying the file to a CD, but all I got was a data disc, not an image. Thanks Justbill

Yeah, Thats what I used. I also booted from the CD, I changed the boot order in the BIOS early on in this project. This is a friends computer, it was given to them with XP on it, they don't have a disc, so............who knows. I have XP on my computer, I also have a Belkin router that I use to connect a few computers to the internet. So, I believe that means I have a network. Can I bring there machine to my house, connect it to my Belkin, and somehow use my network (XP on my personal machine), to repair there system? XP is the only operating system that is on there computer at this time. I wish I had written a few more things down as I tried to repair it last night. One of the things I recall ERD Commander telling me, at one point it told me c:\ was not mounted. When I looked at the partitions,using disc manager, it saw c:\, said it was "healthy", but did not recognize a file system (ntfs). This machine does have a partition d:\ , that one says system recovery, so far I have not been able to access it. On d:\ disc manager "see's" the ntfs file system. Another question. I burrned my CD (Winternals) using K3B, in linux. It boots fine, the thing I was wondering is this, you said that you unzipped Winternals, it installed into a subdirectory, and you burned it from there. Is it possible that, because Winternals was not "installed" on my system, that it did not pick up something it needed? I realize that that whole thought is kind of desperate, but I burned it using open source software, and obviously, MS windows, and Winternals are proprietary. Just a thought. Anyhow, I truly appreciate all the help you have been on this! They really will not be losing alot if we have to reformat, really just a few pictures, and some music, its just the idea of not being able to fix it, or recover those pictures, and that music. Again, thanks for all the help Justbill

Sampson! I tried "Winternals" tonight on that machine that will no longer boot correctly. Winternals booted fine, but I could not repair the machine with it. At one point it asks for a license key, I browsed files, and found something in a folder called crack, and pasted that. Then it wanted me to select an operating sytem, but it would not allow to select the c:\ drive (where winXP is). So when I would try to run repair unbootable system, it would tell me I hadn't selected an operating system. Its like it doesn't see the filesystem on the c:\ drive, in fact when I select the c:\ drive in the file browser, I get a blank page. When I look at c:\ using a Linux live cd, it see's the ntfs file system. I'm quite sure I am doing something wrong here, I am just at a loss as to what it may be. Any thoughts? Thanks much! Justbill [Edited by Justbill on 2006-08-09 06:14:48]

Sorry, I should have mentioned, I have WindowsXP on this computer also (dual boot). So, it looks like all I have to do is unzip it, then get a copy of Nero to burn it. It seems all I have in XP now is either music or dvd burning tools (sonic, real player,etc). Thanks for the help! I did get a bootable cd working late last night (using linux), I'm going to give it a try first on the broken machine (it did boot on one of mine), and see where that gets me before I buy Nero. Any thoughts on all those "Error reading inode" messages? I suppose when I get to the damaged computer, the software will help identify that problem? Again Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it! Its great to have access to a comunity like this one (and linux compatible)! Thanks Justbill

Has anyone ever used "Winternal's Administrator's Pak ? I downloaded it to my Ubuntu desktop, it is a .zip file, I extracted it on the desktop, and tried to burn it. It is supposed to be an ISO image. I opened the folder and found a folder called CD1, which was the only folder that would burn as an ISO image. When I tried to boot it at restart, it wouldn't boot the disc. I know the boot order is correct because I can boot ANY Linux live CD. So I guess I am doing something wrong here. This Administrators Pak is supposed to be a tool to repair MS windows sytems. Any suggestions? Thanks Justbill

So, this is embarressing but, I have been using Linux long enough, and not using XP, that I am going to need some direction here. I have the .zip file burned to a cd. How do I now go about doing what worked for you (Sampson)? I guess I can move the .zip file to my desktop, but what then, and how do I burn it using what burnning application that came with XP? Also, using a Linux live cd, I did get this information about the XP partition: Error reading inode 1376 " " " 1381 " " " 1398 1458 1761 2178 2206 2261 2264 2276 2322 2324 2397 2398 2400 2405 2406 2407 2410 2411 2412 2413 2415 2416 2417 2418 2419 2420 2421 2422 2423 2424 So I don't know what all that means, but it seems like a start to the possibility of fixing it. Thanks Justbill

OK, I found a site that I purchased a download of Administrators Pak. It was a .zip file, I downloaded it to my desktop (I am using Ubuntu "Dapper" (linux)) and extracted the file. Would I burn this as an ISO image, or a regular data cd. The system I am trying to repair is not booting, and if I read this correctly, it should auto run when the computer starts, so it seems to me it needs to be an ISO. Thanks Justbill

I took a brief look at that website. It looks like it has promise, I am going to try to download the trial version, and use that this evening. Otherwise, I would be willing to purchase it, but so far have not found it in my area. I assume this software is available at places like circuit city Thanks Justbill

Hi danleff! Yes, this is a Compaq. This is the first time I have had this sort of problem with a partitioning project. No I don't have the floppy's, I was running Partition Magic in windows. Yeah the unallocated space seemed weird to me also. Also, sorry I forgot to give the thread a title. I don't know where my mind was. I have a thread running over at nt compatible on this also (looking for all the help I can get, to get xp back for these people). Here is a link to it http://www.ntcompatible.com/Error_1655_while_partitioning_t34961.html If I have to, I can always try to make use of the recovery partition, when the computer starts it doesn't tell me which f key is system recovery, but, there are only 12, so trial and error is not out of the question. I just didn't want to see them have to start from scratch. whats really a mystery to me is why it did this. I have used Partition Magic, without incident many times. I have never encountered this sort of problem! Someone over at nt compatible suggested Winternals ERD Commander. I find myself encountering more and more windows problems (on friends computers), so that software may be worth looking at. Thanks Justbill

Well, I ran chkdsk /f and then tried to resize my partition. Now I am really in trouble! When Partition Magic rebooted and started resizing, it completed 1 of 3 operations, briefly gave an error number (that was to quick for me to catch), rebooted to a screen that gave several boot options (safe mode with network, safe mode with command prompt, safe mode, last usable configuration, and normal,). When I try to boot to any of these, I get the WindowsXP splash screen, with the blue line thing moving across, it acts like its trying to boot, and then, it restarts and I am back to the screen with the boot options. This is not good! My best guess at this point, is to run a linux live cd, use gparted to finish the partition job, install a linux system that has a grub bootloader, and see if it will boot then. I suspect the problem is in XP's mbr, but I am not sure. Am I on the right track? Any thoughts? Thanks Justbill