Hellot Posted November 23, 2010 Share Posted November 23, 2010 Hi, I'm trying to recover files from an unbootable hard drive. I've tried many different options, Linux, Hiren's Boot CD, etc. I need a Windows OS though because I constantly get errors reading the disk in Linux, and Mini XP doesn't allow me the options I need. Is there a way to burn a CD or DVD in ImgBurn from the i386 file containing all the Windows XP OS components? I have discovered BartPE and WinBuilder but I didn't realize that I wouldn't be operating in Windows, it's like their own environment. I just want to be able to boot into Windows from a CD like you can do with Linux. I appreciate any help, Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LIGHTNING UK! Posted November 23, 2010 Share Posted November 23, 2010 Nope, not that I know of. Mini-xp (winxp pe?) is probably the best you'll get. Maybe there's a better USB stick version floating around the Internet? Are the issues you're seeing in Linux due to NTFS or are you hitting physical read errors on the hdd? Obviously switching to Windows isn't going to do anything about those. Are you replacing the hdd? If so, do a fresh OS install on the new hdd and then hook up the old one as a 2nd drive. You might it's better to take an image of the entire hdd (if it's dying, before it dies!) and then work your recovery magic on the image. I've used r-studio in the past for that very purpose. It lets you mount the image as a virtual hdd and gives you full read/write access to it too. edit: Tried this? http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5928902.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianymaty Posted November 23, 2010 Share Posted November 23, 2010 Active@ Boot Disk is a good solution that I use succesfuly to acces damaged or non bootable systems http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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