Help!

[interested]

Am helping a mate with 2 laptops at his small business and have the following problems:

1) The HD on the older Toshiba (4-5 months old) seems to be up the spout, and the machine cannot boot. I've tried booting off the recovery CD but the only option is to reformat the HD. Not sure if I want to do this as all the data probably isn't backed up. So - do I send the machine back to Toshiba and get them to back the data up and fix the HD (will they do this?) or just go ahead and wipe the HD using the recovery disk?

2) 2nd machine is a new Toshiba laptop with Vista installed. Just found out that HP don't provide a Vista driver for his HP CL1500L printer and he needs to print. So - should I downgrade Vista (that is pre-installed on this machine) to XP, or set up some kind of dual boot option (not sure how) or run XP in some kind of VM in order to be able to print?

Not impressed with Vista at all. Total rip off of OSX, even down the wallpaper choices. This is driving me mad.

[PRC1964]

I'd bet that if you send laptop 1 back to Toshiba they will just wipe it and re-install.

If you need to recover the data then I'd suggest removing the drive and plugging it into another machine. Then copy all the data, put the drive back and wipe it.

I havn't bothered with Vista yet, but doesn't it have some kind of "compatibility mode" that you can use for the printer?

[interested]

I'd bet that if you send laptop 1 back to Toshiba they will just wipe it and re-install.

If you need to recover the data then I'd suggest removing the drive and plugging it into another machine. Then copy all the data, put the drive back and wipe it.

I havn't bothered with Vista yet, but doesn't it have some kind of "compatibility mode" that you can use for the printer?

Doesn't seem to be any compatibility mode. Just googled and there's lots of unhappy CL1500L owners.

Investigated installing MS Virtual PC, but the fecking thing won't run on Vista Home Premium edition, and needs the Ultimate edition.

HP and MS, you suck.

[Cowboy Bob]

Download a Linux Live CD, burn it, boot from the CD, grab the files from the hard-drive.

[cojak]

If you're not familiar with Linux, go to a newsagent and buy the latest copy of Linux Format with a Linux distribution on the DVD. It gives you instructions on how to use it.

[Cowboy Bob]

If you're not familiar with Linux, go to a newsagent and buy the latest copy of Linux Format with a Linux distribution on the DVD. It gives you instructions on how to use it.

It's important that it has to be a live CD though.

[mcquiggd]

Then spend three years searching for the software you need to install to still earn a decent living... or a Linux based VM to run Windows XP / Vista, which is frankly where the money is...

[Cowboy Bob]

Then spend three years searching for the software you need to install to still earn a decent living... or a Linux based VM to run Windows XP / Vista, which is frankly where the money is...

Great post there.

Just shows how your so determined to run Linux down that you haven't even bothered to read the thread. The OP wants to recover some files from a hard drive that won't boot before re-installing Windows. A Linux Live CD is perfect for this task as you get to run Linux from the CD which can then join a network or connect to a USB stick to transfer the files off the machine. He is not wanting to install Linux, just recover some files.

A Windows Live CD would be equally as good, if there was such a thing.

[cojak]

It's important that it has to be a live CD though.

Linux Format live CD of the month - OpenSUSE 10.2 Live.

Ignore mcquiggd, Bob - he's not interested in boring stuff like Mono and Ruby on Rails...

[darmstadt]

A Windows Live CD would be equally as good, if there was such a thing.

Try Googling for 'Windows Live CD', you'll be surprised. Personally to recover Windows systems I use a Linux Live Cd although you can hit problems there, especially if the Windows system is using NTFS. With Knoppix you then need extra tools as Linux, natively, does not recognise NTFS.