Decompress an NTFS Windows File System Using Ubuntu

My friend (on windows xp) recently compressed his entire C:/ drive and consequently, his laptop won't boot, he gets "BOOTMGR is compressed Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". This happens every time! I can boot ubuntu from the usb so I was wondering if it was possible to fix this issue? Thanks in advance, ell.

EDIT: His laptop does not have a cd drive

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2 Answers

If it's Windows XP and the NTLDR is compressed, then maybe this will work:

1. Install 'ntfsprogs'
2. Mount the Windows partition (eg. /dev/sda1):

   sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/winxp

3. Copy the ntldr to your home dir (or somewhere else):

   cp -p /mnt/winxp/ntldr ~

4. Delete or backup the original ntldr file:

   sudo mv /mnt/winxp/ntldr /mnt/winxp/ntldr.bak

5. Copy the ntldr from your home folder back to the Windows partition using 'ntfscp' (this should uncompress it). You first need to unmount the partition:

   sudo umount /mnt/winxp

   then do:

   ntfscp -v /dev/sda1 ~/ntldr ntldr

6. To check if the operation was successful, you can run 'ntfsinfo':

   sudo ntfsinfo -v -F /ntldr /dev/sda1

   If this shows:

   File attributes: (0x00000000)

   then the loader is fixed and you can try to boot (and I suggest you then untick the "Compress this Drive To Save Space" in C: properties).

2

Tom Hale comment helped me, so I would like to create separate answer for this question.

Mounting FS with parameters -o nocompression helped me.

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