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Rescue Flash Drive
May. 14th, 2020 11:29 amI am NOT at all happy with Windows 10. I also recommend AGAINST purchasing the Edimax AC 600 WiFi Adapter and a Sandisk flash drive. I've usually felt pretty comfortable using various versions of Windows. However, while working from home, Windows 10 started an update in the middle of an important task I was trying to complete. It then took all night just to update the computer. I turned the system on the next day. It booted up Windows successfully and promptly notified me that there was a problem with the drive and that it would attempt to correct it. After that, I was unable to boot Windows on that computer. In both cases, I was unable to choose not to have the task done to my computer. If Windows 10 had not updated my machine and then attempted to do something to my drive, my computer would still be working right now and I would not have lost what I was working on.
I now find myself in the unenviable position of trying to get back the information I was working on. If anyone has any hints, tips, tutorials on this sort of thing, I'd greatly appreciate hearing about it.
I decided to try to create a rescue flash drive for the system. My first choice was to use AntiX Linux for the operating system because it's lightweight and I'm comfortable with the terminal emulator, rxvt unicode, and one of the window managers, jwm. I have the latest AntiX ISO. My next step was to figure out how to get it on a flash drive. I've seen recommendations for Rufus and UNetBootIn. Rufus wouldn't work on my backup computer. So, I used UNetBootIn. I pointed it to the ISO and told it to save 4000 MB for preserving files across reboots. It asked about modifying a file and not knowing what to do and seeing the recommendation was to select yes, I let it modify the file. When I put the flash drive in my system, I got the error: gfxboot.c32 is not a COM32R image. That left me wondering if maybe I should not have let UNetBootIn modify the file. Reading up on the error, I found I could work around it by typing "live" at the boot prompt. I finally ended up with a working computer again.
My next problem was to get the data files off the system. Several posts recommended using the file manager SpaceFM. I'm typically more comfortable with the command line, but I ended up running SpaceFM & from the command line to see what drives were available and what they were called. The flash drives are installed under /dev and the hard drive is accessible under /media. I can see the c: and d: drives listed with names under /media. I can tell which drives they are based on their size. I was even able to run ls on the d: drive by using /media and the name that showed in SpaceFM. I was unable to access the c: drive. I wanted to copy files off the system, which means I needed another flash drive installed besides the one that held the operating system. I tried inserting a second flash drive, but it was not recognized and did not automount. So, I shut down and rebooted the system. This time I left two flash drives plugged in. When AntiX came up again, I was able to see both flash drives. Now I could copy files from the d: drive to the flash drive. I used the command line to do so. When I was done, I shut down the operating system to make sure that everything flushed properly to the flash drive. I was able to view and access the copied files from the flash drive on another Windows machine.
That still left me with the problem that I could not access the files I really wanted and had not had time to back up (because the system updated in the middle of my work) on the c: drive. I checked some articles on things to try to access the disk. The disk shows as there and the size is right. However, SpaceFM and ls can't see anything on it and give errors when I try to access it. I ran ntfsfix with the drive name (in the format /media/drivename). Luckily, ntfsfix was already available on the AntiX distribution. To avoid using sudo a lot, I did an su to root before running the fixes. Whatever the problem is, it looks like ntfsfix couldn't fix it. So, I'm left wondering what next steps to try and what forensic tools might be available to restore data files on the disk (assuming the Windows update didn't clobber them all, which it may have done).
On top of that, I'm unable to use the computer for any useful tasks at this point. I was hoping if I got AntiX working, I could run it using flash drives instead of the hard drive if necessary. Unfortunately, it seems unable to deal with the wifi hardware. So, another task is to see if I can get wifi working. There's no point in eventually replacing Windows with Linux on the system if Linux can't support the basic hardware like wifi, camera, etc.
I purchased an Edimax AC600 USB WiFi adapter so I could use a different machine to replace the one that failed. When I installed the latest Windows driver that Edimax recommended I use on a Windows machine, it continually crashed my system. I was afraid I would lose yet another computer. I tried it with AntiX Linux and it couldn't recognize the adapter. I also purchased a Sandisk USB flash drive to attempt to back up what I could. When I purchased it, I told the vendor what operating systems I needed to use it with. It would not work with any of my operating systems. I contacted Sandisk and they told me they didn't support it. So the Sandisk flash drive is basically useless hardware that I can't do anything with.
So those are my not so successful attempts at using Windows 10 and Linux on this particular computer.
I now find myself in the unenviable position of trying to get back the information I was working on. If anyone has any hints, tips, tutorials on this sort of thing, I'd greatly appreciate hearing about it.
I decided to try to create a rescue flash drive for the system. My first choice was to use AntiX Linux for the operating system because it's lightweight and I'm comfortable with the terminal emulator, rxvt unicode, and one of the window managers, jwm. I have the latest AntiX ISO. My next step was to figure out how to get it on a flash drive. I've seen recommendations for Rufus and UNetBootIn. Rufus wouldn't work on my backup computer. So, I used UNetBootIn. I pointed it to the ISO and told it to save 4000 MB for preserving files across reboots. It asked about modifying a file and not knowing what to do and seeing the recommendation was to select yes, I let it modify the file. When I put the flash drive in my system, I got the error: gfxboot.c32 is not a COM32R image. That left me wondering if maybe I should not have let UNetBootIn modify the file. Reading up on the error, I found I could work around it by typing "live" at the boot prompt. I finally ended up with a working computer again.
My next problem was to get the data files off the system. Several posts recommended using the file manager SpaceFM. I'm typically more comfortable with the command line, but I ended up running SpaceFM & from the command line to see what drives were available and what they were called. The flash drives are installed under /dev and the hard drive is accessible under /media. I can see the c: and d: drives listed with names under /media. I can tell which drives they are based on their size. I was even able to run ls on the d: drive by using /media and the name that showed in SpaceFM. I was unable to access the c: drive. I wanted to copy files off the system, which means I needed another flash drive installed besides the one that held the operating system. I tried inserting a second flash drive, but it was not recognized and did not automount. So, I shut down and rebooted the system. This time I left two flash drives plugged in. When AntiX came up again, I was able to see both flash drives. Now I could copy files from the d: drive to the flash drive. I used the command line to do so. When I was done, I shut down the operating system to make sure that everything flushed properly to the flash drive. I was able to view and access the copied files from the flash drive on another Windows machine.
That still left me with the problem that I could not access the files I really wanted and had not had time to back up (because the system updated in the middle of my work) on the c: drive. I checked some articles on things to try to access the disk. The disk shows as there and the size is right. However, SpaceFM and ls can't see anything on it and give errors when I try to access it. I ran ntfsfix with the drive name (in the format /media/drivename). Luckily, ntfsfix was already available on the AntiX distribution. To avoid using sudo a lot, I did an su to root before running the fixes. Whatever the problem is, it looks like ntfsfix couldn't fix it. So, I'm left wondering what next steps to try and what forensic tools might be available to restore data files on the disk (assuming the Windows update didn't clobber them all, which it may have done).
On top of that, I'm unable to use the computer for any useful tasks at this point. I was hoping if I got AntiX working, I could run it using flash drives instead of the hard drive if necessary. Unfortunately, it seems unable to deal with the wifi hardware. So, another task is to see if I can get wifi working. There's no point in eventually replacing Windows with Linux on the system if Linux can't support the basic hardware like wifi, camera, etc.
I purchased an Edimax AC600 USB WiFi adapter so I could use a different machine to replace the one that failed. When I installed the latest Windows driver that Edimax recommended I use on a Windows machine, it continually crashed my system. I was afraid I would lose yet another computer. I tried it with AntiX Linux and it couldn't recognize the adapter. I also purchased a Sandisk USB flash drive to attempt to back up what I could. When I purchased it, I told the vendor what operating systems I needed to use it with. It would not work with any of my operating systems. I contacted Sandisk and they told me they didn't support it. So the Sandisk flash drive is basically useless hardware that I can't do anything with.
So those are my not so successful attempts at using Windows 10 and Linux on this particular computer.
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