elocinanna

Unfortunately I don't have the Windows CD, and can't think of any way of getting one. The driver that sent everything topsy-turvy (yes that's a technical term!) was on the C drive and I believe it was corrupted during a failed windows boot so it'd probably be what you suggested. Is there any way of getting to my C drive without the windows CD that you can think of? I'd be very grateful!

Righty-o, Knoppix has made a vast improvement over what was there before, I am writing from that same laptop that wouldn't boot windows. I also copied all the files from my D drive (which is an NTFS partition, same as the C drive) but it won't even let me look at the files on the C drive. It's been designated sda2 but i can't mount it, it comes up with an error that says "Error org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.UnknownFailure." The only difference between the two partitions is that C (or sda2) has all the windows files on it whereas d is pictures/games/work/etc. Unfortunately I have a file on my c drive that has a lot of personal value to me or else I'd just format the thing. I've tried looking at man mount and throwing some things into the command line but I haven't a clue what I'm doing. I got this, and was interested by the star under boot for sda2, hopefully it's a good clue. " Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 912 7325608+ 12 Compaq diagnostics /dev/sda2 * 913 10639 78132127+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda3 10640 19457 70830585 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5 10640 19457 70830553+ 7 HPFS/NTFS " as far as sda1 and sda3 are concerned I haven't really got a clue what they are... maybe they're part of the problem? Anyway thanks again, I think it's really cool that people come onto this site just to give help to other people!

Brilliant thankyou, KNOPPIX looks promising. My computer won't load into safemode or use last known good configuration. I've tried all the options on the computer (safe mode with networking etc) but they all have a list of white filepaths loading, and then it gets to a certain one (i think it's a347bus) and then says failed and stays there. But anyway once I get to my laptop I'll try KNOPPIX and cross my fingers!

Hello, windows xp media centre won't boot because of a driver problem, it's a driver from alcohol 120% and i know exactly which one it is. Am I right in thinking if i manage to get rid of this driver, and also a reference to it in the hkey/registry (i warn you i have no idea what these things are!) i can boot windows again? If not, I don't really mind not booting windows again as I was going to move to linux soon anyway (currently only xp media centre on laptop) but I'd love to get some of the files off first, I made a boot disc (i don't have the windows cd anymore) and tried some dos programs to save my files (copy them to an external harddrive or a different partition) but I couldn't figure out how to use one or find instructions on the internet! Can someone reccommend either a simple or at least well documented way of either getting windows to run or salvaging the files on the same partition as the windows files. Thankyou!

That sounds like the kind of thing, except the main thing is to get a program that's running on the desktop pc to be displayed on my laptop screen and controlled by my laptop keyboard etc. I just want to stream the i/o data from the program, using very little of that laptop's resources. For instance if I wanted to play a game that I couldn't play on my laptop because of system requirements but my desktop is more powerful and can run it. Is there a way of running it on the desktop pc in the study, but controlling it/seeing it/playing it on my laptop in the lounge? I can't see why it couldn't be done, I just don't know what type of setup I'd need. It'd be even better if I could run two seperate programs on my desktop (like having MS Word and media player open) and on one laptop be displaying and controlling MS Word and the other laptop be displaying/making the sounds/receiving keystrokes from the other laptop. Do you know what I'm after? The virtual machines seem more designed for someone who wants to use a program that needs one OS and another program that needs another OS. So far I've had no OS compatibility problems, I'd just like a way to run a program on my powerful pc, but be physically using it on a laptop, maybe in a different room. Thankyou for your patience.

Hey there, I have read about cloud computing and from what I understand it's just a way of running a program on one computer, then using it on another, with the host pc's memory/cpu being used but the controls come from and the program's output being streamed to another computer, that needn't be as powerful. I was wondering if there was a way of doing this sort of thing in my house, having our big powerful desktop pc running a game or other program, but looking at my laptop screen and controlling it with the laptop keyboard and touchpad. That'd be really great. We also have another laptop, could we run two programs on the pc (memory permitting), each being displayed and controlled by a serperate laptop? All three computers have bluetooth and wifi, so it'd be nice if we were able to do it wirelessly. I assume there is a way of doing this but I'm not sure what to search for so I come here for help. I don't mind paying for new software or hardware but if there's a free option that'd be even better! One thing that might be important is that the desktop is currently running Vista Home Premium, one laptop is on XP Home and the other has XP Media Centre but if I need a new OS to get this to work I'd love to try a Linux Distro. Thanks for any help, if you could just recommend a program, linux package or even just tell me what what I'm talking about is called and I'll google it. (I'm guessing it's not called cloud computing because the idea of that is having a network of computers doing the remote functions instead of just the one.)