On Nov 6, 2009, at 3:31 PM, Kai Schaetzl <maillists at conactive.com> wrote: > Boris Epstein wrote on Fri, 6 Nov 2009 14:21:39 -0500: > >> If I have a dual-boot machine (Linux and Windows) would I have any >> good tools under Linux that would allow me to look at the content of >> the Windows boot partition, administer it, clean up the registry, >> remove viruses if any, etc? The Windows installation seems to be so >> defective as to be quite useless so I am trying to think of a good >> strategy for dealing with the situation. > > Why would you want to do that? If there's valuable data you can get > them > off the partition with Linux (CentOS can mount NTFS) and then > reinstall > your Windows to that partition. Actually the data on the partition > should > stay unharmed by a reinstallation or repair installation (you can do a > repair installation from the install media). > When reinstalling Windows you may lose bootability to Linux and > reestablish grub. There are lots of articles/tutorials on the net if > you > need help on that. Reinstallation repairs reinit the registry which borks all the applications installed, so it is always better to just reinstall. -Ross