Hi All,

I'm a newbie that likes to try to "DIY", but i'm close to giving up.

My laptop running microsoft xp got a nasty virus.. so i'm trying to recover my files or add the missing microsoft files to get it up and running again.

So far I have downloaded morpheus, read 100's of posts and still have no clue what I'm doing. I did momentarily get a view of my files which looks accesible through one of the samples on morpheus.

I understand that I need to mount my hda1, but can't even figure out where to begin doing this.

Can someone give me a step to step dummy guide to doing one of the following.

1. Grabbing a new winint.dll file (located on my external drive and I can connect through USB) and dropping in my windows system. Hopefully this will alow me to run windows xp and get me into repair the rest of my files.

OR

2 How to mount hard drive and then copying my files from this HD to my external drive through my USB port.

And then I can start with a new install.

Thank for all that who help,
Jamie

It's not linux that is giving you the problems, it's the ideology you are using, linux is not windows and this is the fundemental problem you are having.
Not completely familiar with morpheus, but IIRC it's based on Knoppix. If so, there should be some icons on your desktop and one named hda1, double click it and hda1 will be automounted and you can browse it.
The problem you'll find with any step by step guide that exists or someone will make for you is that it will have non-windows lingo and/or won't apply to your exact situation, but will have generalized info on how to do what you need to do without using the exact devices and such that you will have to use (since there is no way for us to know exactly what you'll encounter).Mounting devices is as simple as choosing a mount point, lets pick /mnt/hda1 for your device and create the directory:
mkdir /mnt/hda1
And then mount it:
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/hda1

If it works, you'll get little to no feedback. Then you can copy and paste files, all assuming this is NOT an NTFS filesystem. If it is, you'll probably have an increasingly difficult time.

When you actually want to learn how to use Linux, we look forward to helping you!

Good luck with the recovery

Cool

Ideology is not my problem... why should I have to learn how my whole TV works just to watch it?

I use linux servers for my websites and theres is a cpanel that make it easy for guys who don't want to learn how to program. I thought the OS would be similar.

Maybe it is morpheus (a lite version), but it certainly is not an easy task to navigate around and what you descibed doesn't exist... as there are no icons to just click.

I'll try using knoppix and maybe it is more intuitive.

I believe my file system is ntfs which you say will get increaisng difficult?

Should I just take it over to the "geek squad" or can you guys get me through this.

In microsoft fashion, I'll pay the $100 (instead of paying teh squad) to the person (or the charity of the person) who helps me reach my goal of backing my files up. I want to learn, but how many more 100's of posts do I have to read to figure this seemingly easy task out.

Maybe there is a reason why Microsoft dominates this market... they just show the me the TV program... I don't need a screwdriver in my hand to tweak every 2 min.

Cheers and I do appreciate your help!
Jamie

Oh, it is. You just don't see it ...

You may have better luck with Knoppix.

Last time I checked Knoppix did not support writing to NTFS.

Only you can do it, it's your computer. You can get some good answers here ... if you can ask good questions.

Linux runs practically forever once it is set up properly. Isn't this your Windows what is broken ... ?

Which "distibution" do you recomend I try, that does support writing to NTFS?

Looks like I'm getting closer:
http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsclone

Thanks for you help!