PE saves the day

[altivo]

It looks like the Bart's Preinstalled Environment will solve my problem and rescue most of Janet's files. Where Windows XP itself insists that the folders are empty, the file utility provided in Bart's PE sees the contents just fine.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions, and especially treadlok and corelog.

It's hot here. Over 80°F for the second or third day running. The rain predicted for this week has all vanished without a drop falling. Fortunately the soil is still damp when you get below the surface, so nothing is suffering yet. Lilacs, apples, and honeysuckle are in bloom, so the air outdoors is constantly scented. The orioles are back, and at least one is singing persistently very close to the house, so we may have a nest within viewing distance this year. Grosbeaks arrived last week, which leaves only the hummingbirds and indigo buntings missing from our regular summer denizens.

The pasture was mowed last week and is already well over my (and Tess's) ankle depth.

Checked on my vacation time today, and even though I've diligently tried to use more of it up this year, I have almost two weeks left over. Three new weeks added this month means I need to take some time off. It's hard to do, though. We're chronically short staffed, and I don't like to be absent at the same time the boss is gone. I've been working almost entirely on computer network issues since Tuesday afternoon, and new books to be cataloged and processed have piled up deep on my desk. I must get some of those out of there tomorrow.

Comments

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

Funny...I just burned a BartPE disk today. Cool that it worked out for you.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes. Except I have to redo it and include the network driver for the machine in question.

On the other hoof, I find it extremely UNcool that Microsoft's own so-called recovery tools utterly failed to help with this. Worse yet that Windows itself, instead of recognizing a hard disk failure, simply locked up and accused the user of being a software pirate, throwing red herrings all over. Microsoft's attitude that everyone is guilty until proven otherwise does nothing to gain my respect.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

I don't imagine you're all that surprised at MS's failures though. Considering the steps you've taken to remove it from your workplace. I wish I could remove it from my own work place. I'm sure if actually had tools that would show me what's really going on, I'd find that half the machines in the office are somehow compromised.

My mate recently bought a used IBM that came with an OEM version of XP. So far he's had to call in for re-activation three times. And on his Linux partition, he's had to call in....errr....never.

As a software "developer" myself, I'm really hoping to eventually learn to develop for the Linux platform. Right now the tools I've learned on don't cross over very well. But I know there are plenty of other tools out there that do.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not surprised at M$ failures any more. Instead I'm surprised that people still cling to their second rate software for dear life, as if it were a life preserver amid shark-infested waters.

I'm not sure what the state of robotics development would be with respect to Linux. Ordinary application programming for Linux isn't all that different from Windows. Pretty much the same languages are supported, and most of the library calls are so similar that it is possible to write code in a language such as object oriented C so that it will compile on either platform.

I think the currently popular higher level languages, such as python and perl, look almost identical in either setting.

[ducktapeddonkey.livejournal.com]

No, I'm not surprised at M$ failures any more. Instead I'm surprised that
people still cling to their second rate software for dear life, as if it
were a life preserver amid shark-infested waters.

I think for a lot of people, just getting anything to work on a computer is a real effort. Once they've achieved that, they're scared they may have to put more effort in to learn something "different". A shame really. Because I think for even the average home user, Linux is now a truly viable and more flexible solution than Windows.

Pretty much the same languages are supported, and
most of the library calls are so similar that it is possible to write
code in a language such as object oriented C so that it will compile on
either platform.

The main problem I've run into is the difference in IO functions. Handling hardware is very different in Linux and a lot of external devices simply don't have any drivers for Linux.

The other problem is that I do most of my development in a non-standard language. (LabVIEW) While there is a Linux version, there aren't very many hardware drivers for it and there are no image manipulation drivers either. So using it for machine vision is out at the moment...unless I can figure out how to port the Windows libraries over myself. (Which I have been told would be possible....just difficult)

The good news here is that more and more industrial app developers are delving into Linux because of either licensing or reliability problems with Windows. As a result, industry is responding and more tools are becoming available.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Hardware drivers are often a real pain in the rear because the hardware manufacturers choose not to support Linux. They won't disclose the details to allow someone else to write the driver for them, and they won't learn enough to write it themselves. They don't feel it's worth the bother, and the constant brainwashing from Microsoft tells them that they only need to support Windows anyway.

Genuine pressure from commercial end users of their products would go a long way toward changing this. Individual users don't carry much weight, they just brush you off. I've learned this myself trying to deal with vendors of products such as UPSes and USB peripherals, which ought to work regardless of operating system but don't because they are so secretive about their API. They just laugh at you when you tell them that Linux support will increase their market. Microsoft has spent more money and effort on brainwashing and controlling the marketplace than it has on developing quality software, I think.

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

I saw my first hummingbird yesterday at the museum. So expect to see some of those guys in the next few days- if you haven't already.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Still no hummingbirds, but the pollen storm is certainly upon us. My car has been literally turned green each morning when I go out to leave for work.

[octatonic.livejournal.com]

Use up that time off! Just sit around on a horse with a camera
taking unusual pictures or something.

Thanks for Barts...thats a keeper.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, it worked like a charm. The first CD I build was just with defaults, and came up without network access. That would have been fine, I could have just used a flash drive to copy off the files, but I figured network would be easier so I rebuilt, following the instructions for including the network driver. That did the trick. The only snag I ran into was that I couldn't map the server share I wanted to copy to from the file utility. It claimed it could do the job, but it didn't work. However, by opening a command line window and mapping from the command line the problem was solved. Might be a stumper for people who don't know how to do that, though.

I recovered her data, her e-mail, and even her Internet Explorer favorites list. Made a great impression on the boss.

As for sitting around on a horse, I just wish. It's so difficult to actually schedule the time. I'd love to just take a whole month off, but it isn't gonna happen. I'll be lucky if I can get two solid weeks at once. Not that I mind four day weekends, but you really need a good two or three weeks now and then.

[treadlok.livejournal.com]

That PE is one of the most usefull tools I've got corrently. Loaded up with ghost, eraser, data recovery tools....

I'm glad it worked well for you. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes. Thanks for the pointer. Being no longer a Windows person, really, I didn't know about such things. (I essentially quit using Windows myself in 2001.)

It did the job with reasonable ease. I encountered only two oddities. One apparently had to do with NTFS permissions, where she had a few files to which I was denied access. Since there seems to be no way to sign into the PE as anyone other than the default user it creates, I couldn't get at those. They turned out to be insignificant, fortunately.

The other was in the network setup. That file utility he provides is slick, but when asked to mount a volume (on the Win2K server) it failed repeatedly. So I went to the command line and did a "net use..." command to get it mounted, which worked on the first try. Then I could get at the volume from the file utility, which was easier than moving a GB of data files from the command line. Same user and password in both environments, but it worked from command line and not from the GUI utility.

If you know what I was overlooking, I'd be glad to hear. Other than that, thanks again very much for the helping paw/hand/hoof/whatever. ;D