Os/hard drive problems

project_failure · Post by **project_failure** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 12:03 pm

Okay Last night i found my old knoppix live cd (version 3.1) and ran it on the family computer.
I used it to check the forums and play frozen bubble.

Problem: When i try to turn on my pc without the live cd it says "error loading OS"
I booted back into knoppix and it won't let me view the hard drive.
It says :

"could not mount device.
the reported error was:
mount: I Could not determine the filesystem type,
and none was specified."

Please help! My family never backs anything up and there are at least a years worth of family vacation pics. I rather fix this than fabricate the truth and say the hard drive broke. (though that may actually be the problem.)

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:13 pm

Ouch. I'm sorry that happened.

I dont have anything for you.
Although if you get really desperate, your can take the harddrive in and have the memory extracted, because I doubt that it formatted the harddrive. And even if it did, it doesnt actually wipe everything from the harddrive, it just labels it as open for writing over.

parkie · Post by **parkie** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 11:57 pm

The grub may have screwed up the xp bootloader. To reset this you can just stick in a xp disk and change your boot settings so it boots from the cd rom and then you can start up the windows xp install and then just when it asks you if which one partition you want to put the OS on EXIT and then it will have reinstalled the bootloader ... should be all good

Post by **bicostp** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 8:20 am

If I remember right, Knoppix can't read NTFS. You need a distro that can. (I don't remember which ones can.)

You might be able to fix your XP install with the install CD. Boot from it, and when prompted, press R to get into the recovery console. At the console, select the installation you want to use, then when you get a normal shell prompt type "fixmbr" (no quotes). This might fix it.

tom61 · Post by **tom61** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:47 pm

It could also be that the harddrive cable came loose, opening the case up and pushing the connector back in might help. This happens a surprisingly high number of times. I just got through fixing a relatives' system, and that was the main trouble.

project_failure · Post by **project_failure** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 12:44 pm

It could also be that the harddrive cable came loose, opening the case up and pushing the connector back in might help.

First thing i tried.

If I remember right, Knoppix can't read NTFS.

Never had any trouble before.

The grub may have screwed up the xp bootloader. To reset this you can just stick in a xp disk and change your boot settings so it boots from the cd rom and then you can start up the windows xp install and then just when it asks you if which one partition you want to put the OS on EXIT and then it will have reinstalled the bootloader ... should be all good

This didn't seem to work for me.

Oh well i decided to just reformat and install windows. Too bad for all the lost data but most of what I cared about I had been spending the last month moving to dvds.