Need an alternate OS that can...

[rock1221]

Hi, I have been running windows xp on my laptop for a few months now and all of a sudden now when i boot up it gives this blue screen with an error and something about ntfs.sys (this comes up when i try to re-install xp too) so i decided to just reformat the partition (any help on how to do that since there is no dos appreciated) in the mean time i need an alternate Os that can read the files on this hard disk and i can copy the files to a cd with. Any help is appreciated.

[Doctor V]

Are you saying you want to copy the files on your bad XP NTFS partition?  That will be tricky.  IF you have an extra partition, you could always install linux on it, mount your windows partition and copy everything you need over.  But most people don't have an extra partition laying around on their hard drive.  There is however, a version of linux that can be run entirely from a CD, its called knoppix.  Your going to have to be able to boot up, can you boot from a CD?  If not, you need a floppy to boot from.  If you want to use the knoppix method then you have to:

Download knoppix (do a google search for the homepage)

Burn it to a CD

Boot into it from the CD if you can, if you can't you'll need to make a floppy disk that boots you to knoppix (should be downloadable somewhere from the knoppix homepage)

In knoppix mount your windows partition (if you don't know how, we'll explain)

Copy and burn your needed files

Fdisk your hard drive, and put a real OS on there.

[Master of Reality]

erm..... you say you reformatted the hard drive.... that means you deleted everything off of it. Which in turn means that there is nothing to get off of it.

[psyjax]

When your computer boots up, initiate the BIOS. Most motherboards tell you how to do so in the manual, or onscreen during the boot process. This allows you to select the boot order. Go to:

http://www.bootdisk.com/

and download one of teh NT boot disks. Create them using another persons computer or something.

Boot from the floppy, now you have acess to your C:\ drive. I don't know how you want to get your files out, but you could either write them to disk, or transfer them to another drive lest you know a commandline cd burning utility.

In any case, you can acess your files this way and see if they are even readable.

[Master of Reality]

the knoppix route will allow him to burn them onto a CD as he mentioned he wanted to do. Im not sure if any of the floppy based linux(es) have cd burning utilities... i know some come with X tho.

[Fett101]

Perhaps try

"i've been having this problem as well
just occasionally
the repair option it talks about is as follows

you put in the XP cd and let it boot from it then choose R for recovery console

log in to your XP installation
then type
"ren c:\windows\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys c:\windows\system32\drivers\ntfs.old"

then

"copy X:\i386\ntfs.sys c:\windows\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys"

then

"exit"

but it didn't do me any good the problem was in a short in the mobo (a mounting screw was connecting two wires together which were on the IDE Channel so the drive was malfunctioning sometimes, took ages to figure it out)

you can try it out in case it is the problem but i've only ever found microsoft error messages to be misleading. there is an error message for every situation just they have scrambled them all up"