I tried to rescue the data of the laptop by booting it on Ubuntu

Target model of work

• DELL Inspiron 1525（Windows Vista）

It's not my laptop, but my relatives. I didn't have any recovery discs, so I was left unattended for years with an unknown password and unable to log in. When you turn it on, you'll reach the Vista login screen, and your hardware should be reusable. Since Vista is not planned to be reused, I will use the MS Office documents etc. for Linux machines after rescue.

Before reusing, I will try to rescue the saved data of the current notebook PC with no use. Of course, if the HDD is encrypted, it is impossible to rescue the data, so you will have to format it as it is and perform a clean installation of the OS. The target machine this time does not seem to be encrypted, so if you can boot from the DVD drive, you can save the contents of the HDD to a USB memory.

Work procedure

▼ I was allowed to refer Retrieve Windows data that can no longer be started with Ubuntu

Preparation: Prepare a DVD-RW with Linux (Ubuntu)

Create a bootable DVD-RW with Linux. This time, we will use Ubuntu as the Linux distribution. Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 are listed in the link of the reference site, but this notebook does not start with the 64-bit version. Therefore, we will use the 32-bit version of Ubuntu 16.04.5.

For work, prepare a PC that can connect to the Internet and write a DVD-RW, in addition to the laptop that can no longer log in. Burn ubuntu-16.04.5-desktop-i386.iso downloaded from Ubuntu Official Website to a new DVD-RW. Right-click the .iso file from Explorer → Burn Disk Image to launch the Windows Disk Image Burner.

I have not confirmed the operation, but if you need an older one, go to Ubuntu official website and go to the i386 version of Ubuntu 14.04. An iso file (ubuntu-ja-14.04-desktop-i386.iso) is available.

Change laptop boot priority

1. Hold down the F2 key and turn on the laptop to bring up the BIOS menu. Depending on the model, the method of displaying the BIOS menu and the menu contents differ.
2. Select "System"-"Boot Sequence" from the BIOS menu to change the boot priority from internal HDD priority to DVD drive priority.
3. Reboot once with the DVD drive empty. The login screen for Windows Vista on the internal HDD is displayed.
4. Now insert the DVD-RW with Linux into your DVD drive and reboot again. It took more than 10 minutes to display the GUI screen.

Data rescue

1. After Ubuntu can be started, start "Files" on the left side of the screen.
2. "OS" at the bottom left of the "Files" window seems to refer to the internal HDD with Windows.
3. When I installed the USB memory, it was recognized and the contents were displayed.
4. Copy the required data from the HDD of the laptop to the USB memory. This time, copy under "C: \ Users \ account name " by dragging and dropping.
5. There are some folders that fail to copy, but skip all.
6. Remove the USB memory.
7. Execute "Shut Down ..." from the menu on the upper right of the desktop. The DVD-RW is ejected.
8. Insert the USB memory into the work PC used to write the .iso file and check if the data can be rescued.

This is the end of the work.