The scenario
- A computer becomes unresponsive in the middle of an
operation.
- The three finger solute (Ctr-Alt-Del) does nothing so I use
the power switch.
- The computer refuses to boot giving me the blue screen of
death before it restarts. It loops through this over and over.
- There are some files on the computer that I NEED.
The solution
I boot the computer with a CD copy of Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.net/) and relatively easily
find the files that were placed on my desktop. Remember that I am a LINUX newbie
and really know very little about how
to use the OS. Now how to move them?
- Tried
using my gmail account to email them to myself. No luck the files were to
big.
- Rebooted
after plugging in a USB Zip drive. Knoppix did not recognize it (or
equally likely I did not know how to tell it to recognize it).
- Rebooted
after plugging in a USB thumb drive. Still no luck. It recognized the drive but has it marked as read only.
- Logged
onto our email system via its web access and added the files as an
attachment which I then mailed to myself. Worked like a charm.
- Mucked
around with the flash drive unmounting it and messing with the permissions
until finally it allowed me to write to it.
So that is the Good News part of the story. I was able to get
the files I needed without any significant difficulty. Knoppix did a great job
of with the disk. In fact when I booted with the XP CD it would not even
recognize that the drive had been formatted so at this point I was really
impressed.
The rub
Then I got to thinking. My computer is secured with a
frequently (to frequently for my tastes) password. Yet all I need to do was to
slide in a CD and I had access to my files. Not a very pleasant thought for
someone who has been accused of being security obsessed.
Now I do remember seeing somewhere the option to encrypt my
NTFS formatted drive. I’m not sure where that was but it sure did not come up
in the last few hours as I reformatted the drive and reinstalled XP with all of
it’s SPs. So it is not something that the average user will find (or use).
Today, none of the files on the computer was particularly
sensitive. No client information, no financial records, no steamy notes to
Allison. But that would not always be the case. This would be Bad News. So now I am on the lookout for
a good encryption program that will allow me to easily store some files in an
encrypted space so that, in a similar situation, I will not be able to retrieve
the files.
So that is it - basically your good news – bad news sort of story.