Recover Important Data with Ubuntu

How To Recover Your Data After A Windows Failure
Have you ever gotten the Blue Screen Of Death (BSOD) in Windows? I am sure most of us have. Did you have important information on your hard drive that you needed to save, but couldn't? Never worry about that again, there is a way you can retrieve all of your information absolutely free. You will just need one of three things so you can save your important documents. 1. An External Hard Drive. 2. A Flash Drive. 3. Another computer on your network with a shared folder.

Hardware & Software Check List
1.CD-R, CD+R, CDR/W, or DVD
2.CD/DVD Drive
3.ISO Burning Software
4.Internet Connection

Note: Steps 1-3 are assuming you either have another computer or have access to another computer.

1.First thing to do is download a Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD from here > Ubuntu 9.04 Save the file (iso) to your desktop or any location that you choose.
2.Once your Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD has finished downloading, you now need to burn the image to a CD. If you need an ISO burner you can download one from here > ISO Burner If you need instructions on how to do this go here > Burning Guide
3.Once your burn is finished its time to start the recovery process.
4.Turn on your computer (if it isn't already) and put the CD in your drive. Now restart your computer. During the restart you need to enter your boot options and select your cd/dvd drive as your boot first device. You enter your boot options by pressing a key like F10, F11, F12, Del, or whatever your computer requires. Most common keys are either F10, or F12. At the boot options screen, using the arrow keys, select your cd/dvd drive and press enter. Your computer will now boot from CD.
5.Ubuntu will now begin the boot up process. On the first screen select your language (english is default) and press enter. At the next screen choose “Try Ubuntu without any changes to my computer.” Its the first option and will automatically boot to this by default.
6.Ubuntu will now load up all the files that it needs to run. This will take a couple of minutes so be patient. Once Ubuntu is finished loading files you will come to the login screen. Just wait here for a couple of seconds, because it will automatically log you in.
7.Once your at you desktop we can now begin to recover all of you important data. On the top taskbar select > Places > Computer > Let this screen load up > Find your hard drive and double click on it. It will say something like 250gb Media (or however big you hard drive is)
8.Once inside your hard drive just navigate to where your data is located. You will see all of your Windows folders.
9.If your trying to retrieve files from an XP install, navigate to Documets & Settings > Users > Your user account > Browse through the folders for what you need and copy and paste them to your backup media (external hard drive, flash drive, or network computer) If your using another computer on your network navigate to > Places > Network > Double Click your Microsoft Workgroup name > Double Click the Computer > You will have to provide admin credentials > copy and paste your data to the shared folder.
10.If your retrieving files from a Vista install, navigate to Users > your user account > Browse through your folders and copy and paste your data to your backup media. The same steps apply for a network computer as listed above.
11.Once your finished backing up your data you can now shutdown the computer down. You can do a hard boot if you want (press the computer power button) or you can click on the red power button in the top right corner of the Ubuntu desktop and choose shutdown.

Thanks for reading!!

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