Recovering Files

[Abius]

Hello all,

Short story, I kept putting off activating windows, and now it has locked me out completly. It boots up windows and just leaes me hanging with a black background and a mouse pointer.

I was wondering if there is a way to get past this and into the system so that I can get the files before a reformat or, if there was a boot program that would allow me to browse through the files on hard drive and move them to an external hard drive.

Many thanks
Matt

 

[Ken g6]

Many flavors of Linux would allow booting off a CD/DVD to do that, including Ubuntu and the venerable knoppix. But mounting the external drive for writing may be tricky.

If you want to build your own Windows boot CD, there's BartPE.

 

[Abius]

I dont think I would need BartPE, I dont really want a custom Windows installation. I just need something so that I would be able to pull the files i need off the hard drive. I know I can take the hard drive out and connect it to a external. But that is a bit to much work for nothing.

So Ubuntu would allow me to boot it up and see whats on the hard drive? After that would there be any issues connecting a USB hard drive?

THanks
Matt

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Yes Ubuntu will allow you to boot it up and see what is on the drive. And you won't have any issues connecting a USB hard drive.