windows problem

ok my gradmas business pc crashed today. when you go to restart it it says:
notice: primary ide master hard drive self monitering system has reported that parameter has exceeded its normal opperating range. dell recomends that you back up our data regularly strike f1 key to continue f2 to run set up utility. when you press f1 it says a disk free error has occured precc ctrl alt del to restart

when i press that it just restarts and does the same thing. i had put the hard drive in my cpu to see if i could get her files off it and when i try to enter the hard drive it says i must reformat it. i was gonna try to reinstall windows and keep the files on and just write over windows but it says i must format it. also i noticed that its on the FAT file system and my pc is NTSF if that makes a difference. her pc is xp home and the only windows cd i have is xp pro. is there anyway i can get her files off the hard drive? its for a business and she has a few really important files that she didnt back up so i really need those.

Download Knoppix or Overclockix (a derivative of Knoppix made by Arkaine on these forums). Burn it to CD. It's a fully functioning operating system on a CD. Put this in the drive and boot, making sure that your computer is set to boot the CD first.

This will allow you to mount the windows drives and copy information that is still intact to floppies or other places on the network.

(As well as to USB thumb drives. This is really most useful!)

If you need any help with Knoppix or recovering your files, let us know.

ok im on Knoppix /dev/hda1 is just dell stuff the important files are on /dev/hda2 but when i go to open it it starts mounting. then gives the error mount wrong fs type bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda2

missing code page or other error

ouchh...seems to me like the whole file system got messed up. I dunno what you could do with that. What command were you using to mount the filesystem ?

WaTTz said:

ouchh...seems to me like the whole file system got messed up. I dunno what you could do with that. What command were you using to mount the filesystem ?

Click to expand...

It could be he let the automount at startup do it. I'd try unmounting then remounting it. (Never hurts to try.)

Make sure you specify the filesystem type.

As root, type: mount -t ntfs /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2 -o ro

i decided to just go ahead and reformat the hard drive. windows is now installing

Sounds like the filesystem may have been very corrupt. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and reinstall.