Hello,

I'm very new to Linux-based operating systems and have encountered a problem. I've recently been taking up some slack as a novice "IT Guy" and have had a couple of corrupt computers brought my way in order to recover the data. I have a bootable USB drive that runs Ubuntu 7.10 which I have effectively used to boot the computers (they normally run Windows XP but aren't booting because of missing/corrupt dll files).

I was hoping to avoid the hassle of reinstalling/repairing windows on these machines until after I was able to recover any valuable data off the drives that may get lost in the re-installation.

On two of these machines I get an error message when trying to access the corrupt drives. It pops up with, "Cannot Mount Volume. Unable to Mount the Volume."

I don't know if there is a quick simple handling for this, or if I should relegate the possibility of recovering the files in this wise as a failed attempt.

Thanks in advance.

PM

Ubuntu should be able to mount and read NTFS. Since the hard drives are already suspected of being bad, my guess is some sort of hard drive problem (not a Ubuntu problem).

You might try booting the systems with a second internal XP hard drive.

Or you might try SpinRite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite

Make sure ubuntu is not mounting them read only or marking the drives hidden.

Ubuntu mounts ntfs file systems automatically without having to edit fstab. I only say this because users of other distros often ask you to post the fstab to troubleshoot. Don't bother.

My first thought is that Ubuntu will not mount the ntfs file system because Windows was not shut down properly. If you have a Windows CD run:
chkdisk /r

This will get the file system so that it can be read. If Window still won't boot, try Ubuntu again and recover files as planned.