[plug] Recovering Windows setup partition

[Arie Hol]

On 30 Oct 2009 at 20:49, Kevin Shackleton wrote:

> I have someone's PC with a fairly corrupt Windows setup - drops to BSOD
> after just a few seconds.  BSOD does not stay up long enough to read.
> System has been up for over an hour with Ubuntu live boot.
> 
> Of course these poor mortals didn't create a system setup DVD with their
> new machine.  And I don't see them as handling anything but XP.  The
> good news though is that using the live CD I see it there's a 6 GB sda1
> FAT32 partition with the  'hidden' flag set.  The contents of this
> partition seem to be exactly a Windows setup DVD of 3.70 GB.
> 
> Question is - what do I do to recover the setup partition?  A couple of
> options are to either set up the partition as not-hidden and bootable,
> and set up a boot loader so I can pick this partition to boot from, or
> else to write the contents of this partition to a bootable DVD, even
> though there' presently a live CD in the optical drive.
> 
> (of course having access to the recovery option in Windows is no
> assurance of achieving a stable system some time in the future!)
> 
> I've done a bit of googling for some hints without success.  Any ideas?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Kevin.

As you did not mention what brand of computer it is you have there, I am 
wondering if the 'hidden' partition actually contains all of the  
installation files and simply needs to be rebooted from a proprietary 
boot/recovery disk as is often supplied with the some computers by 
certain manufacturers/sellers.

They often do this rather than provide a "Windows installation disk".

I would be inclined to ask the owner if they have such a disk ????

That is, if they even know that they have the disk.!!


Regards Arie
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