Debian Install
 

Just installed debian,stop!
Lost my other OS; WindowsXP,stop!
Need to retrieve important data,stop!
Is there any hope,stop!
By the way, I'm new to this open source stuff and I know I jumped in over my head but..... Hey! The Knoppix Live CD is saving my a$$
At least I can get on line!
I can't even get into debian to configure a web browser.
Can anyone give me some suggestions? Thanks.

We probably need a little information.

Are you trying to dual boot XP and Debian? My understanding is that you decided to install Debian, but then realized you wanted to keep data off your XP drive?

Did you install Debian already? Did you remember to install Grub to the Master boot record? Did you overwrite your XP partition?

Knoppix may be of great help in saving your system, depending on what exactly you did.

I did overwrite my xp partition and did install grub.
I did want to duel boot ,at least for a while until I learned Debian(sarge)
I just rushed the install and oopps!

Well, if you overwrote your XP partition, your data is gone. Next time be sure to back up your data first! :( Sorry about that...

On to dual booting, your new mission, should you choose to accept it is to find your XP disks. Here is what you want to do:

1) use knoppix Live CD and qtparted (a nice graphical partitioning program) to create the following partitions:
2) Install XP to the NTFS partition
3) boot into XP and get it working the way you want
4) Install Debian, at boot: type linux26 to get a newer 2.6.8 kernel, DO NOT overwrite the NTFS partition, do manual partition and point /home to /dev/hda4, /boot to /dev/hda2, swap to /dev/hda3 and / to /dev/hda5
5) install Grub to the master boot record

I'll see if I can find a link to help you with the installation walk through...

Hey thanks, but if the data is unretrievable I don't want windows!
I would like to know how to access debian and configure it.
When I boot it I'm promted to login. Ihad a little trouble with password/username when I installed it.
I think I want to go in as root and do this?
Maybe I should just reinstall and start over.
Can I just reinstall over whats there? and start over?

You can. Or if you're interested in fixing it and just need to reset your password, you should be able to fix it from knoppix. First I need to see the output of fdisk -l

Basically, you want to figure out which partition your install is on (my guy feeling is /dev/hda1), then mount the drive, chroot into it, and reset the root password and user password.

Then reboot and you should be able to login again as your user or root.

how do I do that?

Sorry, edited my post instead of doing a new one...

Thanks. Ill try it!
Are you gonna be around for a while?

Probably about 45 minutes...

I'm a very newbe and what you just said eludes me.
Do I just put that code in at the prompt?

Yes.

Only I may have made a mistake and change this line:

to
to mount the drive read write

Oh, and be sure to change username to your actual username. :) If you can't remember what username you created, try typing ls /home

Thanks a bunch.
See ya later!

Did it work?

STOP: if you havn't installed debian yet(I realize I am most likely to late) there is a program you may be able to use to retrieve your data, I am not sure what it is called, but if you search the forum, I had a post on here about this(I know, I asked the question, and then didn't use the answer.)

I found your post and it only looks like it only works on ext2 filesystems. The data he lost was on a Windows XP NTFS partition that he already had installed over...

Really?? Yeah, I guess Win would try to charge a lot for any program
to restore data on their filesystem - however, I was sure a friend
of mine had a program to do this on an NTFS filesystem, or was it just for FAT32??

I did find a commercial product called Disk Commander, but it seems to have been discontinued...

There should be something out there though,(legal or not) that you can use on NFTS to recover files, it doesn't really make sense(even for MS) that they wouldn't.

I did find a couple of other ones by googling "data recover reformat NTFS". I didn't find any free ones though. One that was about $200 seemed like you could even possibly recover data from a couple of reformats back...

Of course, I'm just looking out of curiosity, so I didn't search too hard...