Knoppix

Knoppix is a version of the LINUX operating system which runs off a CD. My lovely touchscreen laptop recently developed an unknown malady which swiftly caused Windows XP to become useless: it would not start up. It took me a few days to work out what to do, as the so called Recovery Disk that came with the computer seems to just overwrite the data on the disk with a new copy of Windows. I did not want to lose my data, particularly photographs that were on the hard drive. So I needed a way to boot up the computer AND see the existing files. There is something called the Ultimate Windows Boot CD, but that requires an existing bootable CD to make it, it seems. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. However Knoppix boots up from a CD and claimed that it would be able to see existing files on the computer.

I downloaded Knoppix and burned it onto a CD. When my computer booted up into Linux, I was so happy that little penguins appeared. It did what it said on the tin, and my data is now rescued. All that remains to do is download another version of Linux to install on the hard drive, as I've had it up to here with Windows!