DescentBB

A friend called re: Sony Vaio VPCJ117FX. She was on-line and it shut down.

She tried Safe-mode - last known....... Also "Startup recovery" pops up and says want to send info to MS but that's as far as it goes.

My question besides any other ideas is - would Ubuntu on a DVD or flashdive load and allow her to "see" her data so she could copy it?

She's a couple hours from me so we're trying things before she brings it to me and I try to pull her data off by USB to serial cable.

Yeah you could do that - use a program called "Xboot" and have ubuntu loaded or a Windows XP Lite.

Or, take drive out and connect it to another machine via USB.

Might want to run a chkdsk on her machine

Do I mount the drive after installing ubuntu?

Thought once I got her data off (if I can) I'd run Spinrite. Steve Gibson is the guy who coined "spyware". He's got some cool free security tools although spinrite is about $80. http://www.grc.com/default.htm

Sorry I digressed, thanks for the post.

Boot the live CD using the "try ubuntu" option. Don't install, as it will repartition the drive.

The drive should be automatically mounted, along with any flash drive that she plugs into the system.

Cool, thanks snoopy.

If the drive is failing, every minute that it's on means more lost data.

The latest...she called Sony and they told her to use F2 & F10 which gave the option to save her data to an external and repartition and restore.

Don't have all the details but remember the function keys got me out of a fix on a Dell, HP...can't remember but it saved pulling the HD and saving the data.

I'll try to get more details.

I can't find anything on the net. Anyone know about those function keys?

The function keys allowed her to get all her data but had to re-install from the disks she made when she first got the computer.