Stuck at two penguins!

[Evilfishtank]

No matter which way I boot the program I get stuck at two penguins. I ran the failsafe mode or whatever its called and the same thing just repeated over and over. The bottom line said there was an "Invalid CHS" whatever that means. I really need help. My computer got infected with a terrible virus, some of my core windows files got deleted in the process. Now I can't boot up windows. I tried downloading a version of linux but it too failed to boot. This is my last hope. I just need to log on to retrieve some important files and thats it. I don't want to have to wipe the whole hard drive without getting important files first!

Anyway to sum it up: I get stuck looking at the two penguins and nothing happens no matter which option I select to boot up. Please help, I've been on tech support forums all day and have had no substantial answers. Thanks a lot.

[verndog]

List your hardware specs: hard drives, IDE, SATA, etc. Video: nVidia, ATI, etc, CPU, ram.

Here's another thought unrelated to Linux. Get hold of a current Hiren's Boot cd, and run the mini XP. Its the fastest booting winpe I have ever seen. With a ton of tools.

[Evilfishtank]

So if I download this it, in theory, should be able to boot from the cd properly and let me get some of my files so I can do a hard drive wipe?

[Icecube]

Did you try the last test version of Parted Magic already?

[Evilfishtank]

You can close the thread. I burned Ubuntu onto a CD and it loaded fine. I got my files off and now I can nuke the hard drive. Thanks for responding though.