ooohkay here the synopsis:

Older brothers co worker likes to go online and play fantasy football, and fap to porn pictures. He knows little to nothing about computers, and I know how much it sucks to be compless so I told him I would fix it. I can't access the bios on his comp, it gives me a media error, check cable. Even after I flashed the damn bios, but I digress. The physical layer of his computer looks good, albiet horridly dusty, I tried removing ram and booting one at a time etc.

When it boots it get to the loading XP screen, and bluescreens for 1/2 a second before restarting. I can't see whats in the bluescreen cause it's so quick.

Here's the kicker, when I put the HDD in my computer, as a slave with mine a master, it still tries to boot from his HDD... I put it on cable selected, AND STILL tried to boot from his HDD, I tried putting his HDD on the secondary ide controler, no joy.

The options I have left are knoppix, or a usb --> ide so I can hot swap that shit in.

He just wants the pr0n, henceforth referred to as the "data" it's all in image files.

I think he got hit with something that corrupted his windowz, but I swear there is a hardware problem.

Anyone have anything to add / suggest / ask

cause frankly after the I try the two options mention, I'm gonna have to tell him I failed.

Just format the shit and install ubuntu. He can still do porn and fantasy football and won't really have to worry about virus'
Also the reason your computer is trying to boot his HD is because its boot priority is above your other hard drive, you can change that in bios and just move your hd above his.

If you can't figure out how to change boot priorities you will probably fail at Knoppix.

Get a USB enclosure, its a fucking no-brainier operation that way.

nice to get a outside perspective, other tend to see what you miss


But now it says the drive is unformated, and when I look at it with spacemonger it just says 160 gigs free, which leaves me to believe the registry is fucked.

Anyone have any ideas on have I can salvage t3h data?

Zorlac, do you think a construction worker with no technical skills can handle ubuntu?

Registry?

You mean File Allocation Table?

w/e emo kid

you got the gist, which was all I was trying to convey

Obviously this man has no skills in windows, so learning either ubuntu or windows will be just about the same thing. Also the MBR could be fucked on the drive, boot to a windows disk and type "fixboot" and "fixmbr" without changing your boot priority, so it tries to open his disk. Should fix the master boot record, if that is a true issue. Else fix your boot priority and use partition magic to magick the drive.