[Hidden-tech] .VxD question

[Jonathan Dill]

What is your level of technical skill?  Or do you have a "guru" in the 
house?  I live in Maryland myself, but there are other people on the 
list who might be available for a "house call."

It's a bit techincal, but normally in this type of situation, these are 
the things that I would try--the point here is to try to access the disk 
"forensically" without making any changes to the disk, and without 
having the operating system running off the disk itself, especially if 
there could be a virus or worm that could delete or damage files.

1. boot from a Linux Live CD (for example Feather Linux, Damn Small 
Linux, KNOPPIX, or Ubuntu Live) and use Linux tools to try to find the 
file(s) on the disk, and possibly make an "image" of the disk onto 
another disk like external USB2 or firewire drive

2. install the disk to another computer--IMPORTANT make sure your 
anti-virus software on the 2nd computer is really functional and up to 
date first!--preferrably I would install the disk in an external USB2 or 
Firewire case and plug it into a port on the other computer because it 
is less disruptive to the other computer, but you could also install it 
internally if there is a connector available

3. try using Norton Ghost to make an "image" of the drive before making 
any changes to the drive or trying any "recovery" tools

This is the error that I was thinking of turns out it was actually 
Windows 2000 so it might not be relevant for Windows98, but may be 
something similar:

http://service1.symantec.com/support/ent-security.nsf/docid/2002071208532048?OpenDocument&ExpandSection=2&Src=w

Jonathan