Here’s the problem.
Earlier this week, I updated some software on my laptop (Thinkpad A31 running Windows 2000 Pro) and cleaned up my hard drive using CCcleaner. The software updates required a reboot. The reboot proceeded normally until, about halfway through the splash screen, the progress bar locked up and I was presented with the BSOD with a stop error for “Inaccessible_Boot_Device.” The error codes on this screen point to drive access problems.
I booted the laptop using PCLinuxOS on a live CD. The C: drive is almost fully accessible. I am able to access all my data files and can open and edit as required. The one exception is the Veritas directory containing the DLA drivers; the contents are visible in Konqueror, but the file names are interspersed with random characters. It appears that I have a bad sector somewhere in the MFT record for this directory, preventing Windows from accessing the files to start the DLA drivers and causing the stop error.
I have the package that would restore this directory, but it will not, of course, run under Linux. I need to load an emulator so I can unpack and install a new copy of the DLA drivers. There is no free space on the hard drive on which to install PCLinuxOS and, for obvious reasons, I don’t want to resize the existing partition.
I am not yet familiar enough with Linux to be sure of my possible options here. Can I install Wine or another Windows emulator over the live CD? If not, is there a live Linux package with Wine or another emulator already installed? If I can restore the DLA drivers, it will make recovering the contents of the drive to its replacement much easier.
Please do not suggest going completely to Linux: this is my corporate laptop and there are equipment configuration programs on the laptop that only run under Windows. Conversion is not an option.
