Simple.
Go back to DOS mode.
The "C:" you were looking at, is the EFI partition.
(I have no idea what it's for, but it was mentioned a couple days ago,
as being in the 40MB size range.)
The other partitions are likely NTFS, and you can't view NTFS from DOS.
More modern versions of DOS, like FreeDOS, would make FAT32 visible for
you.
If you want to poke around your system, try a Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD.
Boot that, and that can observe NTFS or FAT32 partitions. With
the fdisk command (executed in a Terminal window):
sudo fdisk /dev/sda
p # (for "print")
q # (for "quit")
will give you a review of the partition table.
I think, with a well equipped "CD collection", you'd have that
baby running in no time
*******
There is actually an "NTFS4DOS" program, but it doesn't have
support for Long File Names (LFN). I tried to add LFN support
separately, and that didn't work for me. Which makes the package
rather useless, as the file names will all be converted to
8.3 shorthand, and virtually unreadable. So in name only,
there actual is a way to look at NTFS from DOS. It just
happens to suck...
*******
The Ubuntu LiveCD is a much better bet, as it'll work.
The Ubuntu 10.10 release, is the last one to be
"completely free of the Unity interface". If you got
the very latest version instead, you'd *hate* the interface.
You want to get to the Terminal program as easily as possible,
and Unity doesn't make that easy to figure out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_10.10_Maverick_Meerkat#Ubuntu_10....
While the Ubuntu.com site might not make it easy to find 10.10,
the mirror sites will have it. It won't be too long, relatively
speaking, before support for the repositories for this will be
stopped by Canonical. But you can continue to use the commands
built into the CD.
http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs-Ubuntu/10.10/ubuntu-10.10-de...
Going back a level, you can see the other downloads available.
http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs-Ubuntu/10.10/
I just checked the MD5SUM of my copy, and it's the same as
the MD5SUM shown on that site. MD5 is a kind of checksum, and
a (less than perfect) way of determining the download hasn't
been tampered with. I have a Windows copy of "md5sum.exe" for
checking ISO9660 files I download. MD5sum is also available
in Linux, as "md5sum".
59d15a16ce90c8ee97fa7c211b7673a8 *ubuntu-10.10-desktop-i386.iso
*******
What you need, is another PC to prepare that CD for you. A copy
of Nero or Imgburn, can be used to convert an ISO9660 download,
into a bootable CD.
When you stick the CD into the new PC, the boot order will probably
already have the CD first in the boot order. When the screen
eventually comes up, *don't* click the install button. You just
want to use it for poking around.
The "Places" menu, may already shown some partitions on the hard
drive(s) in your computer.
From the Applications menu, eventually you'll find a copy of the
Terminal program (like a DOS prompt, only with Linux commands).
First, you'd do "ls /dev"
and look for things like this
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1
/dev/sda2
/dev/sda3
That would be a disk with three partitions on it.
If you saw right after that
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1
/dev/sdb2
that would be your second disk drive, with two partitions on it.
If you do
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
that will access the primary partition table of the second disk.
If you enter "p" as the command, that will print the table.
You can tell from the partition type, what kind of partition
it is. The "fdisk" command has a table of partition values, or
you can consult here as a double check. 0x07 is NTFS, 0x0C is FAT32.
This scheme is hardly precise, as you can see from the history.
In fact, some identifier types overlap enough, to cause damage
when booting alternate OSes.
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html
If the partitions have "labels", the "Places" menu in Ubuntu may
give the partitions easy names to refer to. For example, my
Acer laptop calls the C: partition "Acer" of all things
The second partition on the laptop is called "SYSTEM RESERVED"
and is part of what makes Windows 7 boot. It would be the
active partition, and would have the boot flag set. (Shown as
an asterisk in Linux "fdisk" output.)
Anyway, if you want to play around, that's how you can do it.
One other note - if you do indeed have a Windows 7 C: partition,
*please* don't change files in there. You can look but don't
touch. I've had a few problems fooling around with the laptop,
and had to use the boot repair feature to fix it. I also had to
restore from backup in one case. I don't have a solid recipe yet,
of the "do's and don'ts" for that partition. I'd suggest mounting
the partition read-only (which Linux supports), but Ubuntu doesn't
make that easy for someone new to Linux. They don't even populate
the /etc/fstab file properly any more, so you can't even get a
prototype of what command options would be useful.
My favorite tool for poking around broken PCs, is the Knoppix 5.3.1
DVD, but that would be a much longer download. The Ubuntu one is
bad enough, at 700MB.
You can get reasonably useful Linux CDs down to 200MB in size, and
also use those for repair work. At 200MB though, some things
are going to be missing, and you can't always get the info you
need to get on with the job (like manual pages missing).
*******
GParted, is another way to view disks. It is available as a command
either from the Ubuntu application menu, or you can launch it from
a Terminal window like this
sudo gparted &
The "sudo" gives admin privileges, the "&" means "fork the command and
free up the command prompt so I can enter another command". You don't
use the "&" thing on the fdisk command above, because that was an
interactive session and you don't want it "floating in space". Interactive
commands should "block" the terminal while you're using them, and that
ensures they have the focus and get the characters you're typing as
their input.
GParted gives you a graphical view of the partitions. It looks much
like Disk Management in Windows, one line of blocks per disk.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/GParted.png
*******
I realize that introducing Linux to someone who has never used it
before, is a tall order. But the point of me writing this much, is
to point out there are *lots* of options for forensic work. Virtually
anything else you grab, other than your DOS thing, would likely
give access to NTFS, and tell you what's going on.
If you had an actual Win7 DVD, you can boot that and use the
"boot repair" option, which can fix simple damage cases to the
setup. But since you've got a Dell, and haven't had a chance
to burn any of the "backup discs" they make you burn, you
don't have any recovery or repair discs yet. Which is why
there are always other forensic options.
Paul- Hide quoted text -
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