Help recovering information from Windows

[Neil]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 2:01 PM, Amanda Farr <amanda.farr at gmail.com> wrote:
> I brought my laptop to work and connected to our work network and the
> network tried to put our work image on my computer. My laptop is pretty
> screwed up right now. I can't get to Windows at all.
>
> I know I can just buy a windows OS disk and reformat but I want to recover
> the information on my computer. I thought about trying to take the hard
> drive out and putting it into an external case but I've never taken apart a
> laptop before and I'm not sure if it would even work.
>
> I read some time ago on Digg that you could use an Ubuntu live cd and mount
> the drive but I really have no idea how to do that and would need very
> specific instructions. Does anyone know where I could find instructions for
> doing this and recovering my information?
>
> I appreciate the help and any advice anyone has.
>
> Thanks,
> Amanda
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Hello

For starters, let's see if there is much hope: What OS did you have on
the laptop before the problems? Windows? Linux?

If you had windows, did you put the "my documents" folder on another
disk (ie: D:/ (data) )? If you did, the "my documents" will probably
still be salvageble. Most of the laptop manufacturers are smart enough
to do this by default I believe.
Most probably the documents on your destop are lost beyond normal
rescue (there will be ways, but you will probably go insane while
trying them)

If you had Linux on there, just boot the Ubuntu CD and look at the
disks that are already mounted. You'll be able to find everything,
unless you made no seperate /home (not the default, luckily).

I sure hope it is possible to help you. Always glad to help fix
something Windows nuked (although this does not seem to be Redmonds
fault directly).

Neil


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