Re: Need help with a totally avoidable problem

"Frog Prince" mentioned:

> They have some mission critical data on the second (no back up since 3 +
> years) AND now have either a system problem or (more likely) mal ware on
the
> HDD.
>
> I can boot from the CD, from the 1.44 floppy and the HDD under normal
> conditions.  What are my options to access the HDD to recover the critical
> file?
>

Jeopardy. What is the game that presents the answer for
what question?

> I have another stand alone PC that I can use that has a good HDD to boot,
> perhaps I can set the effected HDD drive up as a slave?
>

This is perhaps your best bet.  However, changing jumpers to set the
drive as 'slave' will rarely cause the drive controller to 'see' an
altogether
different drive setup, and you could 'lose' everything.  For best results
consider adding the drive as master on the secondary IDE channel.

If you have an OS such as Win2k or XP, you have support
for NTFS and retrieving the file should be a cakewalk.  Once
you have 'rescued' that mission critical element, run 'chkdsk'
in 'fix all errors' mode and reboot.  Then scan the drive for
malware.  Depending on what has been fixed in the process,
the OS may boot normally when returned to its original mobo.

If /you/ don't personally have 2k or XP, you mentioned that /they/
do:  If need be, use that OS/HDD as the mothership to 'rescue'
the ailing system.  Your biggest hurdle is simply that an NTFS
partition will only be visible from an NTFS based OS.  So
if you are in 98SE, you will not be able to access the HDD
as will appear not to have any valid partition.

> System is connected to the internet via a how brew Ethernet system that is
a
> kluge of left over equipment but as far as I can tell there is no
provision
> for file sharing nor do they have any active network servers.
>

Where are you going here?  You need to get the HDD/OS fixed first,
then you could set up the LAN and copy the valued data from one
machine to another.  But your starting premise seemed to be that
the ailing system would not boot, although you stated that it would
boot normally. That would be: Why am I confused?

Good luck,
-g