As I have said time and time again, no operating system is created equal, nor do they present themselves as better than another. Such a statement can be applied to Windows because, hopefully, everyone knows Windows is prone to crashing. If you haven’t backed up your important and even your not-so-important files recently, getting those files back can be a pain…until now.

Note: If you plan on reformatting your system, please refer to Your Universal Guide to Windows (Part 1) before proceeding with this article for necessary download links to free security software. If you are attempting to recover your Windows machine from a crash, it would be wise to access those downloads from another computer and transfer them to an external storage source.

You could use a file recovery program to attempt to get your files back after reformatting, but that doesn’t guarantee you will get them all back and retrieve 100% of the data. If you want a sure fire way to get all your data back, one of your best bets is to use a Linux distribution on a Live CD. If you have never used Linux before, this walkthrough will be a nice introductory to Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu is a nice stepping stone for those that have not ventured the Linux path, allowing users to get a feel for the Linux software and even a decent grasp of the Linux command line.

If you do not have an Ubuntu disc or have the ISO downloaded and burned to a disc, visit DistroWatch or the Ubuntu website to download the ISO image and burn it to a disc with ImgBurn or another ISO image writer. Afterwards, follow the instructions to learn how to view your hard drive.

1. Insert your new Ubuntu Linux disc into your CD drive and reboot. Your PC will boot Ubuntu from the disc.

2. A menu will appear with a list of options. Select Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer and press enter.

3. Allow Ubuntu to boot. At the very top of the screen, you will see a task bar with a number of options. Click on Places and then Computer. This will show you your hard drive as well as other hard drives on your system, if it applies.

4. Double click on your Windows drive to view the contents. If it opens immediately, skip to step 11 and read on. If not, continue on with the next step.

If you receive an “Unable to mount the volume” error, the next few steps will show you how to force the drive to open to view the contents.

5. Click on the Details link on the “Unable to mount the volume” error message, which will include a command line to force the drive to mount. Copy that command line down.

6. Go back to the top taskbar and click on Applications, then Accessories, and then Terminal. This application will allow you to use the Linux command line.

7. In order to force the mount of your hard drive, we will need to change to the administrator mode (Linux terms: root). Type in the following command:

sudo /bin/bash

8. Hard drives are either in NTFS format or Fat32. If you do not know what kind of drive you have, type the follow command:

fdisk -1

9. A directory must be created in order to mount the drive. Use the following command:

mkdir /media/disk

10. The following command is what you will type next, with a slight variation. Where it is bolded, replace that with what you copied down from the error details. This command is for those with an NTFS drive.

mount -t ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/disk -o force

If you have a FAT32 drive, use the following command line:

mount -t vfat -o umask=000 /dev/sda1 /media/disk

If you do not know what type of drive you have, refer to step 8 again.

11. If you completed all of the steps correctly, you should be able to see your hard drive contents.

Now would be a good time to have your external hard drive or other storage content with you. Please note that not all external hard drives are compatible with Linux. Please be sure to check to see that yours is.

Explore your hard drive as you normally would on Windows. Assess the amount of space used and how fast Ubuntu is retrieving the data. If you have a lot of data and Ubuntu seems to be lagging some, stop the data retrieval and look at the contents it has acquired. If there are a lot of useless old files, delete them. If there are a lot of .tmp files, delete them. Afterwards, try and read the folder again and do the same.

Once the hard drive has been cleaned and your file have been backed up, congratulations! You can now reformat your hard drive and reinstall Windows!

First please watch the video above as it will help you better understand the tools required to get this job done correctly.

I have always had the issue of Mac OS X not having the best IRC clients. So I decided to start using mIRC within a VM (Virtual Machine) Running windows XP. However the problem I ran into was not getting the fancy growl notifications when I received a PM or Highlight. To solve this issue we at Geekologist have found a way to get mIRC to send notifications to Growl via SSH.

Requirements :

• plink.exe – It can be download from putty’s download page. (Just google Putty)
• growlnotify – This is included in the software bundle when you download Growl
• mIRC (Obvious)
• SSH enabled on the Mac – (Follow the instructions in the video to do this)
• Growl installed and running on the mac

mIRC Scripts you will need :

For Highlights :

On $*:Text:*:#: {
if ($highlight($1-)) {
if (($0 == 1) && ($1 isnum)) return
else echo $color(highlight) -ts -Highlight- $nick highlighted you in $chan $+ . ( $+ $replace($1-,$ifmatch, $+ $ifmatch $+ ) $+ )
/run -hide plink.exe -ssh MACIP -l YOURUSERNAME -pw YOURPASSWORD /Users/YOURUSERNAME/growlnotify –image ‘/users/YOURUSERNAME/images.png’ -t ‘ Highlight from $nick ‘ -m ‘ $chan $+ : $replace($1-,$ifmatch, $+ $ifmatch $+ ) $+ ‘ -n ‘ mIRC ‘
}

For PM’s :
On $*:Text:*:?: {
if ($nick == $active) { return }
/run -hide plink.exe -ssh MACIP -l YOURUSERNAME -pw YOURPASSWORD /Users/YOURUSERNAME/growlnotify –image ‘/Users/YOURUSERNAME/images.png’ -t ‘PM from $nick ‘ -m ‘ $1- ‘
}

Please replace YOURUSERNAME with your mac username, YOURPASSWORD with your mac password and MACIP with the IP address of the mac running growl.

If you have any questions or comments please leave them below.