Jump to content

Looking for Guru Advice


Genenut

Recommended Posts

okay as some of you remember eldest son fubarbed his computer a while ago. it had win 2k on it and norton ghost in a safe partition. We THOUGHT that was enough to keep his computer up and running until he corrupted his registry and now beyond the bios screen his keyboard and mouse are dead as a door nail under a windows boot and its been this way for about 2 years.

 

This summer he got his hands on an unbutu (sp?) boot cd rom and that boots fine and he can use his computer with that so the hardware is fine, this is a software only issue. So now that I have a way to access files on his computer I'm looking for advice on how to salvage things for the windows install he still has. (the linux os runs from the cd rom only its not on the harddrive) or if this other os will run what he wants to run?

 

We do not have the original install disks for win2k (its a legal copy in that the owners of the disks do not have it install on another system but they still retain the disks rather than us) . The ghost partition is still there and if I could get to a dos or dos style prompt with keyboard access I can restore his system from the ghost partion. I have seen downloads of win2k boot disks and I can make him one using my xp based system. I could even make a cd rom based one I think. He has a floppy but it may be involved in the registry issues.

 

I'm looking for a way to either a) restore the ghost partition contents to the main drive which will leave the teen with a working windows system that will run the games he wants to play.

 

or b) will this linux based system run games like daggerfall, diablo, and most importantly sacred 1, etc? We're not talking top of the line games or even in the last couple of years games but the ones he would like to play that we are willing to install for him.

 

So if we have any windows experts out there or linux experts I'd love to hear from you.

Link to comment

Well I'm no guru, but no one else has posted yet so I'll get what I know out there.

 

In Ubuntu you can download and install DOSbox (PortableAps) using the Synaptic Apps manager, AKA the Add/Remove at the bottom of the Applications menu. DOSbox is a DOS emulator and you can gain access to your ghost drive with a little work to interface with the ghost partition that you want. I assume you need DOS to interface with some sort of executable or .BAT file as part of the restoration process? I'm not too familiar with ghost drives.

If you only need to access the files on the ghost drive you should be able to do that within Ubuntu itself by using the "file explorer" same as you would in Windows. I've used Linux on more than one occasion to restore my files from a hard drive that Windows failed to recognize randomly.

 

An answer to your other question: Yes, Ubuntu can run those games you mentioned. Daggerfall and Diablo should be able to run through DOSbox as well since they both ran in DOS. Sacred 1, I'm not sure, but you could always try WinE (Windows Emulator) which is also free and can be installed through the app manager. I've ran Guild Wars in WinE before. Granted there was a performance drop but each game behaves differently in WinE.

 

Good luck to you! That's about all I can offer. Hopefully an actual guru or two will pop in to help.

Link to comment

Best tip for seeing if a game will run under Ubuntu/Linux (for those games and others), is to search http://appdb.winehq.org/ for the game name. They maintain a database of many many PC apps that can or can't run in WINE.

 

(As an aside, WINE doesn't mean WINdows Emulator, although it can... it's not an emulator but an actual shell that lets you run Windows Applications and .dlls

"The name was derived from the recursive acronym "Wine Is Not an Emulator", although an alternative expansion is "Windows Emulator".")

 

DOSbox should I suppose allow you access to command line in dos, I can't say I've used it for such however the native filebrowser as of Ubuntu 8.04 (probably earlier, but haven't tried earlier versions so I don't want to guarantee compatibility before then) has no issues browsing NTFS drives, and FAT is even easier for it.

 

I don't know for sure that the dos prompt would let you restore the ghost partition because I don't know the format/'software' it originally used to create it. It's very possible that Ubuntu itself would allow the partition to be recovered just by using the right command from the Terminal (Console).

 

It shouldn't run .bat files natively but if it's simply a question of copying the drive over via a specific command that doesn't need any decompression it should be able to do so natively.

 

If you make a list of the games you'd want to play and test them vs the WINE appdb. Diablo 2 seems to work perfectly in Wine, Daggerfall isn't even found (although the new release direct to drive might thanks to the patches I think I heard it had to allow it to run in a Windows Environment), and would need a few fixes to get it to run in dosbox on Ubuntu. Diablo doesn't seem to work in Wine, but googling quickly it might in DosBox.

 

His Ubuntu CD *should* allow him to install rather than just use the CD although if you want to try and recover anything first you'd best make sure you don't overwrite anything. Of course Linux has a few games of it's own that might be fun, I certainly had fun with Battle for Wesnoth on my laptop (Hex-grid based Real-time Tactic game)

Link to comment

Thanks Zinsho, I had forgotten what WINE really meant and now I chuckle again at the acronym.

 

As far as DOSbox goes, I've had experience running it in both Windows and Ubuntu and was able to run TES:Arena and Quake among a few other games on it just fine. It allows you to 'mount' a drive or folder to be a drive viewable in DOS and even gives you instructions for doing so right at the start of the program. You should, in theory, be able to run any DOS-compatible game in DOSbox running in either Windows or Ubuntu as long as the folder for the game keeps its original structure. In other words, if you get a hold of a DOS game's folder tree or installer file you should have no problems with running it for the most part. I'm sure there are exceptions but DOS was a pretty straightforward OS back in the day :P

Link to comment

The quick issue I saw for Daggerfall when googling is that in DOSBox it sometimes... ends up showing a black-screen unless you patch it to 2.213 or something of the sort. Has nothing to do with DOS, just has to do with the graphic output, considering that aspect has evolved drastically.

 

Interesting to know that that's how it works, it makes sense however (as far as mounting/etc).

 

Right now I'm trying to figure out if I can make 'folder' links on my Ubuntu server to a bunch of ISOs so I can mount them directly as network folders on my Windows machine, would be easier than having to use any sort of DVD emulation software... we'll see.

Link to comment

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...
Please Sign In or Sign Up