[david9647]

Hello.
I uninstalled some software from Windows, and then I could not access Windows upon restarting. I decided to do a repair install, as I had been having some other problems. However when i tried to do the repair, I continually get a blue screen of death, it flashs for less than a second and all I can catch is something about a bad pool. Windows is installed on a C: partition, I also have two other partitions, D: and E:.. I want to copy my Documents and Settings folder from the C: drive to the E: drive, and then do a clean install of Windows on C:. All the partitions still exist, as I can read from then using a Linux Live distro.
Is there a way for me to copy this directory from the Recovery Console? At the moment I can only copy a single file., and this would take an age.
Is there another way for me to achieve my task? I do not have a CD-burner on this machine, so backing up is out. I realise I could create a new partition and install Windows on that, and then copy the files when finished. Messy though. I have a USB key and so I could copy the files to that from within Linux and then restore them when finished. But I am unsure of the file format the files would be in, and the actual size of the folder I want to copy is over 600MB so there would be alot of copying, pasting to a temporary machine and so on and so forth. So what I would really like is a command from the Recovery Console to copy this directory from C: to E: or D:. Or a freeware app that would boot from a floppy that would allow me to do this quite easily.
I apologise for the long question, I have learned that I should always back up my data!
\Any help greatly appreciated.

David

 

[Elvandil]

Once in the RC, execute these commands:

Set AllowWildCards = TRUE
Set AllowAllPaths = TRUE
Set AllowRemovableMedia = TRUE
Set NoCopyPrompt = TRUE

(Note the spaces before and after the equals sign.)

PS. You can copy all those Set commands to a text file and put them on a floppy. Say you named it Set.txt. Then from the RC, you type:

batch A:\set.txt

and all the variables will be set without having to type them.

Then, create a directory on the destination drive.

copy <My Documents path>\*.* <New Directory path>\*.*

(I should note that Help and Support says that the RC copy command does not support wildcards. I have not tried it after setting the variable.)
---------------------------------------------------------------
Read-only access to the NTFS drive from a DOS floppy is also an option (so long as you copy to a FAT32 partition):

http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/ntfsdos.shtml

 

[oricix]

I just tried to do the steps that was listed, but when i entered the set commands, it says "the set command is currently disabled. The Set command is an optional Recovery Console command that can only be enabled by using the security configuration and analysis snap-in"

never even heard of that.

E

 

[Wanderer2]

Knoppix or other boot media would be your next step to do as you desire.