Linux is a great Windows recovery tool
Source: Newsforge
A couple nights ago while attempting to install a program on a Windows ME Sony VAIO laptop, it fritzed out on me and wouldn't re-boot. It was something about a "missing or corrupt vmm32.vxd file." The lonely little c> prompt didn't give much hope.
Knowing how Windows handles "recovery," I was well aware that if I were to "recover" Windows, it would not only wipe out the partition it wanted to be in, but possibly the other one, too (maybe that's not true now that I think about it). Because I hadn't backed up in a while, I really wanted to recover the data on the drive. I happened to have a Windows 98 boot disk that, oddly enough, booted enough of this Sony computer that I could see the two partitions in DOS. I copied everything of value from the C: partition to the D: partition manually through DOS.
Having moved my valuable data into the D: partition, I installed Mandrake 8.2. I had installed 8.1 on a desktop before, and found it relatively easy, but thought the laptop thing might be a bit of trouble. Installation was absolutely trouble free. The only thing I can say that may not have worked just right was locating the modem, but I didn't spend a whole lot of time worrying about that, because I was happy the network card was found!
