Linux as a recovery tool

Yesterday morning, I received a call about computer problem. Apparently, it's about computer virus infection or Trojan horse, and therefore, I asked the victim to download an anti-virus software in order to remove the offending files.

Later of the same day, I was told that the situation could not be solved in that way and I asked the victim to backup all the files to another media... by then at night, I was told that the computer could no long be booted up. I asked the victim to bring the whole computer to my home for inspection.

Of course, I am not trying to recover that Windows XP, knowing that it was seriously damaged. And while I was waiting for that poor computer to arrive my home, I burned a Ubuntu Live CD and I know it's probably the easiest way to get the files back. Ubuntu is a very user friendly Linux distribution, and it's also very powerful, it's available for free download from here:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

And you can even request for a free CD from them. Anyway, it's so easy to use, just place the CD in a CD/DVD drive and then change the booting priority inside your BIOS setup to boot that drive first and you are ready to go!

After at most a few minutes, you will see the user interface. The user interface is very easy to use and intuitive. You can plug your removable hard drive, or any thumb drive or whatever is big enough to hold your important rescued data. It's simply plug and play, a new drive icon will appear on the desktop for you to access that drive.

Then, I asked the victim to select the dead Windows XP partition and then all the files were shown up! Yes, it's that simple. The next thing to do is to select all the important folders and do a copy and paste to the removable media, and it's done! You can even burn CD/DVD if you got no removable hard drive or something similar.

It's easy! Just try it out, and I know it's a very good first experience with Linux!