[Grimm]

my friends disk has been crashed for a few months and hes awaiting my help to fix it. he tells me that the error message he gets says a system file is missing. if im not mistaken theres a DOS command thatlly rebuild the critical system files right?

if not, he wants all his documents and stuff off of it and onto his iPod, that would be something like

"move c:\documents and settings\pat\my documents f:" (assuming f is his ipod)

correct?

i dont wanna give him rong info and further destroy his hard drive or cause damage or loss to his music (which is alot)

thanks

[Kioshi]

well first off what is he running? wondows/linux or what. and if its windows what version.

to copy files over to something else (assuming ipod = f)

/copy c:/documents and settings/pat/my documents F:/

i believe.

judging by the command string you put on he is running windows xp or vista in which case (chantelle/mel correct me if im wrong) there is no dos mode for either Os. and you would need to do it differently

i personally dont know how so i would just take it to a comp shop and see if they can do it.

[Grimm]

what do u mean no DOS mode? boot into sfe mode command prompt only or into recovery console and itll let u enter dos codes to manipulate the drive

[Kioshi]

the command promp thing is a type of dos but its not actually dos mode. it is run off of windows dos is a seperate thing cut out after windows 98

like i said though i could be wrong.

[Grimm]

w/e, as long as it can actually get into the drive, cuz normal booting wont, and he has gotten into recovery console, just hasnt known wut to do with it.

[ivy]

yup the cmd is
/copy [source] [destination]
however he can get a
msg like 'Invalid Drive Specification'.

[Chantelle]

is dos going to recognise his iPod? I am not sure it is you know.

why dont you slave it in another machine and copy it across to another disk that way

[Tricky]

Or just get a copy of the Windows disk and do a repair installation.

[Grimm]

wen i formatted my ipod to ntfs dos could recognize it. im pretty sure it should recognize it, as even in safe mode my ipod was recognized. w.e we can try it. what do u mean "invalid drive spcification" trick?

[Chantelle]

hold on... are you talking about DOS or command prompt? not the same thing

[Grimm]

entering dos commands thru a recovery console or safe mode command prompt thing.....getting to a point where the disk can be manipulated even if it wont boot

[Kioshi]

its not dos chantell hes doing it via command prompt in safe mode

[sora]

i would have called pc world by now ;P

[Grimm]

ya but pc world is money....alot of money especially for just a crashed drive. i can do it, i just need the command and where to put it in, thats basically wut im asking. or, to make things easier, a command to rebuild critical system files, which i swear there was one

[Tricky]

There are certain commands to rebuild the master boot files, and good ol' CHKDSK. Other than that, I don't know of any repairs you can do that won't require a CD. The master boot record might even need it. Which brings me back to my original statement -- just do a repair installation w/ the disk since you'll need it in order to reformat the drive anyhoo. Keep in mind, if he's going to use his iPod to move files over, and he formats it using NTFS, it's going to erase anything he has on it. Also, the transferring is going to take a long time, I'd assume, if he has a good deal of music.

If you still want to go through with this, the commands are pretty standard for most DOS-like prompts.

Use "cd" (I believe caps makes a difference) to browse folders. It stands for "change directory." You'll need to navigate to the folder that he has his music in, so for instance, you'd type: "cd C:\music\"

Next, a copy command is also pretty straight-forward. It'd be formatted as "copy <filename.extension> <output directory>" You can also use wildcards, which I'd recommend for this situation since he isn't going to want to type each of his mp3s out by name. I think the correct form would be "copy *.mp3 F:\" if he intends to copy all his mp3's to the F:\ drive (let's say that F: is the iPod).

I think that's about it. Good luck.

[Grimm]

itunes writes alot of their stuff as .m4a or mp4, so anything he got off a cd would be excluded from .mp3. doesnt "md" stand for move directory? i could just use that on his itunes folder

[Tricky]

I'm not familiar with that command. Nor would I do that. That'd be physically moving the entire contents over from the hard drive to the iPod. If your move fails, the iPod crashes, or whatever the case may be, you could potentially lose everything you moved. You're better off copying it to the iPod, ensuring it copied, then copying it to another computer's harddrive for safe keeping. You'd be playing a risky game if you tried moving a file over w/o copying it and leaving the original contents.

[Grimm]

ok, but u cant copy directories? cuz that would make it a whole lot easier

http://www.csulb.edu/~murdock/xcopy.html

EDIT: md is make directory, i remember now

[Tricky]

*Shrug* I'll leave it up to you to experiment. I'm not super familiar with command-line codes. I'm skeptical about whether you'll actually be able to pull this off, though. An iPod isn't like a hard drive, even though it more or less is one. Connecting it through firewire or USB probably isn't going to work. I'm not sure Windows boots any of those devices when it is in command prompt, which is why you can't usually boot off anything other than CDs and floppy disks -- although, I think they added this for Vista. It's different when you start the Windows installation or have the computer started up. All the device drivers are loaded, which, incidentally, includes USB and Firewire support. It's possibly they load all this when you start the recovery console, but I wouldn't expect it to.

[Grimm]

wenever im told to choose a disk to boot off of it always says "boot off cd or onboard usb device. maybe that means it loads usb devices...but im not sure either. ill give it a try tho, if not, i have 230 gb of empty space on one of my disks, ill bring it to his house and just keep his crap until his comp is stable again

[Tricky]

Eff-that. Just have him bring his to your house and plug it in. You can still access it as a secondary drive, and just do a quick one-two-three back up by copying his crap over. Saves you some time and it's way more efficient.

[Grimm]

thats a much better idea, ill prolly do that.

[Chantelle]

Grimm, I know my original score was for you ro slave it in another pc which is what seems to be your notion now.. but are you sure ??

thing is we went from DOS, to safemode to Recovery console here... none of which are the same..

I dont want you to ruin your mates PC by doing this.

If its a bad master boot record , I can give you the command to fix that i think its just

fixmbr in recovery console

[Grimm]

i dont know what it is, ill ask him for the error message that it gives him wen it boots up, then maybe you might be able to decipher it

[Chantelle]

arr

its possible fixing masterboot record would do it