I gayed myself...BOOTMGR is compressed.

hofodomo01

Okay, I was in a state of delusion one day, but here's what I did....

On my laptop (which was working fine), I right clicked the C drive icon, hit properties, hit the 'compress disk' option. About a minute or two into the compression, I hit cancel. Everything was fine. Then I restarted my laptop....

Now, after the initial Dell screen (I have an Inspiron 6000), I get a message saying:
[quote=error message]BOOTMGR is compressed.

Press ctrl+alt+del to reboot[/quote]

I've tried reinstalling windows (I have a vista DVD), but because I still need the files on my computer, I didn't completely format my hard drive. Basically, reinstalling the new windows over the old one didn't fix the compressed bootmgr problem.

Now, what I want to know: if I can't boot up my computer, is there any way that I can retrieve my files? Because if I can do that, I can just format my hard drive and reinstall windows from scratch.

So if anyone has any idea how I can get the data off my hard drive, I greatly appreciate any suggestions.

Thank you so much. Sorry for being such an idiot and trying to compress my hard drive for no apparent reason ^_^

TheGeek

If you have another computer this is very simple to fix.

Get a jump drive (or some other device to store your stuff you wish to backup onto), a blank CD and go download Knoppix ISO file from the link.

Once you have those things, you will need Nero or some other CD burning software (Nero free version is enough to do what we need) and you must burn the .iso image that you downloaded using the "burn disk image" feature, you can't just burn it like an audio cd or data cd.

Once you have the CD burned and the media you want to backup to ready to go. Put the CD in the broken computers CD drive and restart your computer. (you may need to hit F12 during the "dell screen" to select boot from CD). After that you should be booted to a desktop that says Knoppix on it, congratulations this is a linux live CD. From here just plug in the media you wish to backup your files to and open up the hard drive icon on the desktop that contains the files you want to backup and just drag and drop them into the storage media (assuming it's a jump drive or removable hard drive) or else burn it to a CD/DVD.

Then you just put the Windows CD when you are finished backing up things and do a complete fresh install.

hofodomo01 · Last edited by hofodomo01 on Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:53 am; edited 1 time in total

[[edit]]

okay, ive tried it out. knoppix loads fine. the thing is, i've never used any linux os before, and on the desktop, i see 3 hard disks, but they're all "desktop config files" or something like that.

where do i actually find my old c drive? i'm pretty much a noob at this...

TheGeek

Glad I could be of assistance, if you have any further questions feel free to ask.

SgtGarcia

The whole filesystem in linux is different from windows. There aren't any drive letters or stuff like that, only folders. You should find al your devices in the /dev directory. I didn't use knoppix recently, but it shouldnt be to hard to get to the root of your filesystem. Just get an explorer-like window open and try to go to the most upper level. Then there should be a directory called /dev. In there you should be able to acces your hard-drive. Your harddrive probably is hda or hdb, every partition has a number, so the partition you are looking for might me hda1 or hda5 or something like that. Just try and open the numbered hard drive names, those are existing partitions and once you see a familiar directory list. With a windows directory etc. then you are in the right place.
You should be able to transfer the files to your usb drive, which is also accessable the same way. Just copy and paste the files you want to keep to the usb drive.
I hope it works, and please post any other question. I'll be glad to try and help you out