It's really the easiest way to do it with a full GUI - Most any 'live' CD will work, but the newest distros tend to contain read and write access to NTFS formatted partitions, which is what XP uses mostly (unless you specify otherwise and / or upgraded from a previous OS like 98 that had no NTFS), and Vista and 7 use by default.
Any of these suggestions are good, but that guide runs you through with a walkthrough as well, so that's a plus for ya - just have to print it out, download and burn the .ISO and you should be good to go.
Of course, if the Live CD / DVD manages to get your Ethernet / wireless working so you can get on he Internet, then you have no need to print it....
John, Went back to the beginning and read every post again. i'm not sure if this is a good link meaning accurate or not but but wiki had this:
Live CD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reading that wiki made me think about all that the forum helpers, senior members, and in particular the malware experts often took charge and often demanded that the person that they are helping "do EXACTLY what they say" i was not offended by their demand because i know what happens when a person you may be trying to help decides to "help" and does something on their own ( males and females do the same thing ) so, in a way it's kinda like being in the military: they want you to do it "their way" and most of the time the reason is sound.
In any event. Based on the wiki link that i posted, i realized that i used three different ( maybe four different ) Live CD's
Since this drama started in MAY of this year i have spent several hundred hours trying to first cure the sick PC then getting it to boot.
i have been a member of both help forums that i used for ten years at least. They are both excellent forums and the members are like members here always ready to help. What would we do without help forums? After numerous suggestions from members i had two experts step in and ask me to follow their instructions the way i mentioned above. Before anyone jumps to thinking that tow different experts from two different forums could be a conflict. Yes that is true. But i used one for almost a month trying numerous moves including using tow different Live CD programs ( i'll need to look at the CD's that i made to boot the Gateway but i am pretty sure none of them are the three mentioned here ) One of the reasons it took so long is that each move is revealed one at a time and then i had to post back what the results were.
So first thing to know here is that every Live CD that they suggested worked to get me a desktop. However, the desktop was foreign looking in the most obvious way: something things were missing from what my desktop looked like.
With those Live CD's i was asked to do a variety of things including doing a scan to find and eliminate "the problem" ( malware ) One of the Live CD's was by Avira which is the antivirus program that i used on that PC so it seemed like a logical choice. It indeed found malware and disposed of them. But the computer still wouldn't boot. i ran the program a second time and sure enough the malware was gone. So why wouldn't it start? No one knew. Another program supposedly made a complete report available in a folder that was either associated or in essence a fresh USB drive that was in the computer when i was making the CD ( on a healthy PC using an interesting program that wrote the CD when the program was downloaded. But for whatever reason, and we tried doing the process with a fresh CD three times. The file on the GUI root directory was there but after running the program there was ZERO on the jump drive.
Another program need to be made with the same CD burner only i had to use a CD RW where the report would be posted. You can guess the result of that. A report was generated ( too long to type out and not copy and pasteable for some reason.
Then i had to go on a business trip and a 10 day trip turned into a 33 day marathon. Besides coming back to the sick Gateway and over a month of mail i had a new "smartphone" then made me feel like i really didn't know half as much as i thought i knew and if you ever read my first post you might have figured out that i was like a kid who's Dad gives him a Ferrari Daytona as his first car: there's a good chance the car will wind up wrecked.
Bottom line: are the Live CD that you guys mentioned here basically suppose to do the same thing(s) as the other Live CD's are suppose to do?
It's great to see that i haven't lost everything. The question is how do i get it off onto a jump drive or better yet an external hard drive.
Sorry for the lengthy post but honestly i don't know how to deliver a minimalist version of a disaster besides saying: "My computer go Boom."
Seriously, doesn't the details of how we get to where we are tell a more complete story than saying i got a bug of some kind and now my computer won't boot?
Thanks again for coping with this situation.
