Creating floppy boot to run live CD-ROM
 

I'm trying to help someone save their files from a dead windows installation, they're in the US while I'm in the UK so please bear in mind I have no access to her PC.

Her problem is that she can't log into windows, the PC was set up by an ex-boyfriend and she doesn't know the passwords, it's never asked her for one before now. She says it's logging her in then immediately logging out. Anyways, it looks like her files should probably be intact so I had her download and burn a Mandrake Move iso.

The problem is that the PC is not booting from the CD-ROM, I suspect this is down to BIOS settings but she doesn't know how to get into her BIOS and the info disappears too quickly for her to read anything. I've tried having her press F1 and Del as the PC boots but it's not playing :)

So, I figured the easiest solution is a floppy boot disk that will run the CD-ROM, is this possible and if so, how would I go about creating one (on her other Windows XP machine)

I did suggest taking her hard disk out of the PC and putting it in the other as a slave but she doesn't feel confident enough to do this.

Thanks in advance

stick with getting the boot cd to work.... make sure the bios is set to boot the CD..
and make sure the burned the iso onto the cd correcftly.

you wouldnt believe the number of people who try to burn linux cd's by making a data cd with the iso image on it !

The CD is burned correctly as I did that myself via remote assistance on her other PC. Obviously the easiest method would be to boot from the CD-ROM, but as I said we're having HUGE problems getting into her BIOS settings. She doesn't know anything about the BIOS and can't read anything as it boots, and the usual keys (F1 and delete) have had no effect.

At the end of the day, it's quite possible the machine's set to boot from the hard disk first and this won't work either, but I'm running out of ideas.

flip the bios battery out of them machine...
is she confident enough to do that ?

when my bios is reset (hardware updates) on the next boot, i get a bios battery warning, and am given 2 options... F1 -> Bios Settings F2 -> use defaults.

hopefully she will get a similar option...

also, maybe try a BIOS upgrade... that may solve cdrom booting issues.

I'll suggest trying that one, cheers.

Well, managed to get into the BIOS, having her open up the PC enabled her to read the motherboard model number so I could download the manual :)

CD boots but the screen just goes blank so I've got her downloading knoppix now. Thanks for the suggestion :)