Neighbours (not mine) big problem with pc

[chesters1]

Neighbour sheepishly knocked on door she has broken her laptop .
She hit the keyboard in frustration (not revealed what it was) and now it takes an hour to get to the cave on win 10 ,trying to log in takes half an hour and it reverts back to the cave.
I had a look indeed it does (groan)

The disk is working so i guess the heads destroyed some of the data in the windows installation ,the recovery section pops up in a flash BUT it cannot save her user files it produces an error.so i think a reinstall from a windows disk will have the same problem saving the user files

Just use it to reinstall you say "pictures of the grandkids" groan so they will probably disappear.

Tried running ubuntu from a dvd to grab the pictures and put them on a flash drive but it cannot see the hard disk its not mounted

A win 10 startup repair (from a win10 disk) took 10 hours and failed to do anything ,chkdsk the same as was sfc /scannow (cannot use /f it says a fix is waiting for a reboot ,rebooting changes nothing) .

The only way forward to grab these bloody pictures is from a cmd prompt but its been decades since i played with that.

Can anyone tell me how you know what drive is the usb drive and more importantly how do you (step by step i am an idiot) how you would copy the revelent items and put them on it PLEASE.

I tried installing ubunto (looks a nice bit of software) on the drive itself but it comes up with an error ,i guess the hard drive is unmounted again? It sees the partitions as a win 10 partition loader ,a win7 (her original os ) loader ,a recovery partition (keeping away from that )and a 4gb partition ,it refuses to put the ubunto loader on any of them and sits waiting.
If i can get these damn photos off i will be grateful and yes she has been warned many times to save them to a dvd or 3 ,shes president of the local lions so a nice lady who needs a bit of help as i do! Thanks

 

picture of the error seen trying to access the windows partition using ubuntu ,the hard disk recovery partition opens fine!

 

https://db.tt/sq1CdNb5

Edited July 23, 2016 by chesters1

[Andy_1984]

The drive not showing up in ubuntu is because of windows hybrid boot.

 

You can load up windows and shut it down by using: shift + click shutdown (proper full shutdown not some hybernation half shutdown)

 

More details here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/236807/how-to-mount-your-windows-10-or-8-system-drive-on-linux/

 

You can then atleast access the drive

 

ubuntus quite cool isnt it put it on a bootable usb drive instead of dvd so you can save things. Windows has a hard.time seeing linux drives so theres a +1

Edited July 23, 2016 by Andy_1984

[chesters1]

cheers ,been trying to get a F8 boot (to get to safe mode) screen by using the c:\ bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

but it doesnt understand the instruction.!

 

anyway booting it to the log in screen takes an hour so i will get back to you after i try your suggestion thanks

 

still not even to the cave yet ,now this shut down thing does it work from the initial screen you type your password in ? getting to the desktop to do the shut down isnt feasible

 

"ubuntus quite cool isnt it put it on a bootable usb drive instead of dvd so you can save things. Windows has a hard.time seeing linux drives so theres a +1"

 

YES it looks ok ,i might put it on my xp laptop which is very slow ,it may bring it back to life as 1gb memory is less than most phones now!

i will put it on my flash drive while hours pass for the cave to appear

Edited July 23, 2016 by chesters1

[chesters1]

Thanks ,the drive is now accessible but what a strange thing ubuntu is ,i went to the windows drive and picked a folder and "copied to' my 64gb flash drive but ubunto gives no clue to whats its doing

In windows a box opens and it fills up as the files are copied in ubuntu nothing so how do you know when the files copied fully ?

Also the files and setting has an arrow in the box on the windows drive and if you copy it across it has one as well but in properties its a link?? Is it a short cut? Which will point to nothing once i remove the flash drive.

Its all a bit vague and i thought windows was purposely vague to stop fingers fiddling but it appears to give more info on background actions

[Andy_1984]

Arrows indicate links (shortcuts)

 

Id go to the drive and look for the windows user folder instead of the entire drive and right click and "copy" and then right click and "plaste" in the usb storage drive (drag and drop doesnt always work for me)

 

there will he a progress window popup. Its probably copied and pasted the shortcut that fast you didnt notice it

[chesters1]

got 10 gigs of something over so far ,getting a few errors that demand i do something ,using 'skip' as i am not sure if 'skip all' is like windows do the same for the same errors or telling it to skip all the files following corrupted or not?

 

i grabbed the users folder and documents and settings

 

"Its probably copied and pasted the shortcut that fast you didnt notice it"

 

taking two hours to switch on far enough to switch off believe me fast isnt something this drive has left lol

 

the only way i can see if anythings happening is to check the properties of the flash drive to see if its got more data on it

Edited July 23, 2016 by chesters1

[Andy_1984]

Doesnt sound right ive always had a progress bar when copying...

 

Just a thought, the icons on the desktops side bar groups windows together there should he something highlighted there that looks like a folder hover over it or use scroll wheel to see them. Usually a small progress bar (green) on the folder icon in the side bar too.

 

Can also use alt+tab like on windows to switch between running applications

[Andy_1984]

http://www.tipsninja.com/restore-file-transfer-status-window-ubuntu/

[chesters1]

aha great stuff ,thanks

1.3 mb/sec wow ,

the second folder seems to be stuck on preparing

Edited July 23, 2016 by chesters1

[Andy_1984]

Fast eh that was one of my first nice surprises with ubuntu.

 

The pending one might be because of the hard drive if its showing signs of failure or maybe a lack of ram since ubuntu is running from the ram instead of hdd it might start when the other is done.

Edited July 23, 2016 by Andy_1984