We are trying to get to the data on the novell netware 5.1 server. the server does not boot anymore. SYS volume corrupted. Boot partition reformatted in Win98 (lost autoexec.ncf) no backups of this. Administrator had corrupted the SYS volume and server would not go up anymore. fired administrator, and now we are trying all sorts of things to get to the FS volume to take the data out. we are trying to redo the NetWare 5 boot to burn the FS volume to some DVDs. Then we would reformat the whole thing and start again fresh. we are able to get to the temporary server, but it seems we are unable to mount the HDD and volumes. booting from a disquette to be able to transport all the data to the winXP workstation would also be nice. The server boots ok in windows 98, networking ok. any suggestions ? Thank you very much

1. never use win9x boot partitions - allways msdos , pcdos, drdos ( no himem , emm386 or smartdrv ) 2. if your desired data is on a 2nd volume called FS install a new sys volume connect the hdd with FS as an additional disk and mount the volume. if the FS hdd is physically ok it is not difficult to do that. perhaps you consult professional help (depends on the value of the data). regards mike pacholke www.hsinet.de www.alte-netware.de www.old-netware.com

Use a linux distribution to boot the machine and copy the files somewhere. Ideally, you could just boot, start an FTP client, and copy the files to a server over the network. What distribution you choose depends on what functionality the machine has which can easily be supported. Knoppix would be do the job, but so would Damn Small Linux. If the volume is slightly messy, you can always dd it across the network (or to a connected drive of some sort).