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Can someone recommend an easy, smallish, linux to put on a USB stick so I can have a poke about and grab data on a failed Vista laptop. Laptop is reporting no bootable device so I suspect borked master boot record but I'm a bit out of touch. Only recovery disc I have is only giving me the option (in Polish) of restore factory settings, I want to copy the My Documents off first.
Anyway, easy way of getting a bootable OS on a USB stick?
Thanks in advance.
Just head over to the Ubuntu homepage - step by step instructions to creating a bootable USB there IIRC.
slainte 🙂 rob
http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ is quite a useful way to create a bootable usb. No need to have an ISO, it downloads whatever one you choose from its menu.
Cheers,
Ian
So which version/iso/release do I need. There's desktops/live/net versions, and loads of releases. Which do I pick for what I'm after?
Just download from here - http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop
Then follow the instructions here to create the USB booter - http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows
Then just boot the broken machine from the stick (assuming you can get far enough into starting up to select the boot device order) - http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-ubuntu-desktop - ignore the installation instructions as Ubuntu will just run from the stick.
slainte 🙂 rob
What flavour of Windows?
When this happened to my other halfs laptop I managed to sort out Puppy Linux which ran off a usb stick I think (or maybe loaded into RAM from cd....
Anyhoo...it was really easy. I am crap with computers but managed it.
Just Google Puppy Linux.
Cheers all, got a bootable going from Ubuntu, still wouldn't recognise the drive from Linux so have hoicked it out and spent most of this evening reinstalling on a spare. it doesn't recognise it in a usb cradle either from other PCs so it's pretty far gone. Might investigate it later with a data recovery utility.
What flavour of Windows?
Exactly, XP32/64, Vista32/64, 7 32/64/Home/Home Premium/Ultimate,8 all different 🙂
The borked laptop is Vista32, this one is XP32.
I've swapped in one of my backup drives to get it going and am now scanning the dead one with Easeus Partition Recovery.
This seems to suggest it can reinstate the lost partitions but I'm being a big jessie about hitting the "Proceed" button in case it loses it all for good.
I can sort you a Vista recovery disc .ISO if that's any help?