BleepingComputer.com: Need help with rescuing corrupted XP installation disc with Linux Ubuntu

I've just read both of your posts, and have followed pretty much every piece of advice that applies to my Dell's BIOS. (Yes, I always saved the settings when making changes on the BIOS.)

A boot menu does come up when I press F12 upon turning the PC on, but its just a basic menu which lists "Hard Drive", "ATAPI CD-ROM" and "Removable Dev." (aka Floppy Drive). Doesn't specifically mention the USB drive. I even tried setting the USB drive as the sole HDD on the BIOS' "Boot" menu, disabling the desktop HDD, but all I get is a boot failure screen, not an Ubuntu boot menu.

Otherwise, the BIOS appears to ignore the USB drive and go straight to booting XP. It lists it as an HDD, so I know that its recognizing it, but nothing more. I've set it up every way possible but no no avail.

It's an AMI BIOS from 2001 BTW.

Give this a try as a last resort:

Boot from USB without BIOS Support via PLoP CD
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/boot-from-usb-without-bios-support-via-plop-cd/

I d/led the program, burned it to CD and attempted to boot from my USB drive through each of my Dell's four USB ports. In all of them, after clicking on USB, all I got was a command line SYSLINUX copyright mention, and things didn't progress from there even after leaving it on for several minutes. I only managed to get the Ubuntu boot menu just once from one of the back USB ports, and when I tried to boot it from the drive, it stalled right at the beginning. After I restarted the PC, I no longer got to the Ubuntu menu on that particular USB port.

Dave

That was a disappointing result, but we are not beaten. Let's try another way of getting ddrescue running on the old DELL since we can't get it to boot from the USB stick. Instead of using Ubuntu, I want you to use Puppy Linux. The advantage of Puppy is that you can boot from a Puppy CD and it will load completely into RAM (memory). You may then remove the Puppy CD, and put in your XP installation CD and proceed to run ddrescue. Too easy! Are you willing to give it a go?

Please download Puppy Linux 4.3 (it's not the latest version, but it is the version I am running .... it will make life easier for us) from the following link (direct download):
pup-430.iso Download size: 105MB

Burn the .ISO image to CD.

Boot the DELL with the Puppy CD.
Choose your keyboard layout and then language/country/time zone etc if you wish, but it is not necessary. You should then end up at the Puppy desktop.

Next thing is to check whether your internet is working or not.
Go to "Menu" (the Start button) > Internet > SeaMonkey web browser, type in an address and hit <ENTER> .... Success?
If you need to configure the internet to get it working go to "Menu" > Setup > Network Wizard

Once you have the internet working, then you need to download ddrescue-1.13.pet (direct download). Save the file to "Documents" in Puppy (default location choice).

On the Puppy desktop, click on File > My documents and you should see ddrescue-1.13.pet there. Click on it: You will be asked if you wish to install. Click "OK". All done.

You can remove the Puppy CD and it will still operate, since it is all loaded into memory.

There is another cute feature of Puppy: When you go to shut down, you will be asked if you want to save to the hard drive. Choose to do so.*** This is just great! What it means is that everything you have done since booting with the CD can be saved to the hard drive along with the configuration settings, and it will be available when next you boot up with Puppy which will be much quicker. You will be offered a number of options in the process, but going with the default choices should be fine.
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Now for ddrescue.
Insert the XP CD in the optical drive. You should see an icon appear on the bottom of the desktop, probably labeled sr0.

On the desktop, click on "mount" icon. You should see your hard drive listed under the "drive" tab". Click on the "mount" button. Look at the "optical" tab, and mount the optical drive too if it is not already mounted.

Note the name of the optical drive, which will be something like sr0
Note the name of the hard drive, which will be something like /mnt/sda1 (and you will have your existing myxpcd.iso and myxpcd.log file at the root of this drive)

Now open a terminal: On the desktop, click on the "console" icon.
At the prompt, type in to the console window the following:

ddrescue -r -1 /dev/sr0 /mnt/sda1/myxpcd.iso /myxpcd.log

where sr0 is the XP CD in the optical drive (mounted)
and /mnt/sda1 is the first partition on your hard drive (sda) (mounted)


If you have done everything correctly, ddrescue should now run and pick up where it left off on the Clevo/Sager.

Let me know how you get on.

I followed all of the aforementioned steps correctly, and as ddrescue was "copying non-tried blocks" and the CD spinning grew more constant, it kept eating up more and more of my Dell's RAM until there was no more, causing a write error (no memory left) and pretty much freezing the OS, so I rebooted. My Dell has only 640 MB of DDR (133 I believe) RAM.

*sigh*, Is it worth working on the "my Clevo has a virus" assumption, or is there absolutely no way of getting the PC to work without a repair install? Because there's no hope for this CD obviously.

That doesn't sound right to me. Your 640 MB of RAM should be perfectly adequate.

Are you sure that you were writing the .iso and .log to the hard drive and not trying to store them in memory? Please give me details of your DELL hard drive setup and where you stored the existing .iso and .log, and then the command that you typed in to run ddrescue.

Edit: Also, since all blocks have been tried before, I think that you should not have seen "copying non-tried blocks" if all was working as it should be.

Edit2: I will set to work in earnest tomorrow on the Clevo/Sager problem, and get back to you soon.

This post has been edited by AustrAlien: 27 December 2010 - 06:15 AM

My Dell has a 20 GB HDD, and I stored the myxpcd.iso and .log on the root (C:) of that drive. I typed in the exact command you mentioned, upon which ddrescue got to work. Towards the end, when the CD spinning grew more constant and my RAM was being consumed, the "rescue" file size kept growing bigger and bigger as well (I believe when I left off the rescue on the Clevo, it was in the 430 MB range) before the aforementioned write error.

Dave Finlay, on 27 December 2010 - 02:46 PM, said:

That gives me reason to be optimistic, although I do not understand what is causing the current problem (unless the DELL's optical drive is reading so much of the CD that it can't keep it all in memory until it next writes it to the hard drive ??? I wish .... )

How much free space is left on the 20GB HDD? Is there enough room on the drive to complete the job?

I have no idea of the length of time that ddrescue ran before the system froze. Is it possible for you to run ddrescue for a time, and then stop ddrescue (using Ctrl + C) well before it gives the "write error"? If so, then run ddrescue again .... In this way, you may be able to run ddrescue a number of times and each time see the rescued file size grow larger and larger with each succeeding attempt. Let me know if this is possible and if it gives you any measure of success. What sort of "rescued file size" are you seeing now?