Dr. Tux to the rescue!

I got a phone call from a friend today, he was having some computer troubles. His computer (actually an aincent one from 1999, running Windows 98) would not boot up at all. I figured that there are three possibilities:

1. His MBR got screwed up
2. His Windows 98 partition got screwed up
3. His hard drive crashed

He did have some important data that he wanted off, so I had hoped it wasn't the third scenario.

I downloaded the Windows 98 (SE) boot disk, wrote it to a floppy, and brought over Mepis and Kanotix Live CDs.

Well, my first attempt was to use the boot disk to start the computer up. Windows 98 simply did not want to read the drive (this is starting to look like the number 2 scenario).

So... I whip out Mepis. I am hesitant to do this, however. Why? Their computer is old. I know that Linux is great for old computers, but this one has 64 MB of ram - hardly practical for a Live CD, but I don't really have a choice. I booted up Mepis (s . . . l . . . o . . . w . . . l . . . y), and was surprised to learn that it couldn't read the windows partition.

In a desperate last attempt, I popped in Kanotix. That booted up (s . . . l . . . o . . . w . . . l . . . y) and it could read the partition, although something was wrong with it. I couldn't back up the whole drive, since lots of files were corrupted. Luckily, the important ones they wanted weren't, and were all small enough to fit on a floppy.

Thanks Doctor!