Problem with Windows XP login

[Tostado]

[Note: ADDers can read SUMMARY for quick explanation of problem.]

This past week has been pretty annoying for my computer. First of all, I have a problem with logging into XP. About a week ago, my computer crashed. When I rebooted, a dialog box came up stating that odbcint.dll could not be found. I tried all the login modes, but still was unsuccessful (I'd disabled System Restore earlier and forgotten to reenable it, so that's out of the question).

After a while searching in vain for my bootup disk (this is a Dell, so I have to use theirs), I decided to try Knoppix. I tried to copy odbcint.dll from /I386 to /System32, but I didn't have the permission to do so. Unfortunately, the same applies to any writing onto the harddrives, so I can't even copy the files over to the slave.

I then decide to try the SuperUser mode to change the permissions, but then remembered some of my 'buddies' thought it would be fun to change my Administrator password while I was away (I'd totally forgotten to even set it, doh!), so this was out of the question also.

Fast forward to today where I download an XP password changer. It seemed to work fine, but upon going into Knoppix again, none worked (not even a null one).

Just a few minutes ago I remembered that a friend of mine gave me back the CD-RW drive I'd lent him for a few months. Well, surprise, surprise, not only will the drive not open, but also I remembered that I'd tested it before this whole mess came up and Windows did not seem to recognize it, so I assume that Knoppix would be the same.


SUMMARY:
Cannot log into Windows
---Missing odbcint.dll
Tried logging in with Knoppix
---Cannot write to HDDs
---Cannot change permissions
---Cannot use secondary CD-RW drive

I've searched lots of other places but haven't been able to achieve any real results. It's not really that imperative that I get this fixed soon since I'll be getting a laptop in the near future, but I would like to get it over with. If I can at least get the CD-RW working, I can burn all I need onto DVDs (which is being occupied by Knoppix now). So if anyone has any suggestions, I would appreciate them.

[XSquared]

What format is your primary partition? If it's NTFS, there's pretty well no chance of you being able to write to it (safely) from Knoppix. Also, the root password should be null on Knoppix. If you change it, it should revert when you reboot.

[Waldo2k2]

pop in an xp pro or home cd (depending on your version) and run the recovery console, from there you can copy the file from i386 to system32

[Sang-drax]

Why does Linux have such big problems writing to NTFS? I know NTFS is an advanced file system with security, encryption, compression etc, but it has been out for about 10 years.

Just wondering...

[Waldo2k2]

It has such trouble because there's no free documentation on how it works, everything we've figured out is through trial and error

[Sang-drax]

It has such trouble because there's no free documentation on how it works, everything we've figured out is through trial and error

Yeah, I know, but still... it's been out for nearly a decade.
They have manged to emulate the Windows API and run DirectX games on Linux, which at a first glance would seem harder.

[Waldo2k2]

yes at first glance it would, but they freely let programmers know how their api works, DX is along the same lines. I'm not trying to start an argument but think, how can you discover how a file system works if you don't already know how it works? It's not easy to try to watch how bits flip on a hard disk as you're doing file operations I don't think it will be long before they get it right though, they're nearly there.

[Tostado]

Sorry for the late reply. I found out that I have to leave earlier than expected to go back to school and just now got finished packing. Thanks to all for their help.

Anyway, my step-brother came over today and fixed the problem for me. I'm not entirely sure what he did, but in the end he enabled Knoppix to write to the HDD and so I just copied the file from I386 to System32. I think it had something to do with using a Windows emulation process to allow the file writing(but then, I'm in the software side of the trade and not the hardware, so I'm not sure of the specifics).

So now everything works like before and I have enabled System Restore so this won't happen again (because we can always trust MS, right? right?).