I was dual booting XP with Ubuntu for a year, then XP crashed and on reinstall wiped out the rest of the disk. Then a year later my emachines motherboard bonked, and a week after that the old XP computer from the garage got an autologoff virus, and I've not been able to get into either disk since, as the first one only boots to the emachines motherboard. In the meantime I've built my first computer, yea!, and gone back to Linux. However, I'd like to be able to get into my old (or either) XP disk, and at least use it for magicjack that I use for long distance calls.

My understanding is that some virus changed the name, moved, or deleted the userinit.exe file on my XP disk, and I need to reinstate it to proper position.

Could someone advise me on using Linux to either (1) edit the registry on my XP disk so I can log in and it won't log me back off, or (2) be able to use my XP disk through Linux.

if magicjack is an XP program, it will not run in Linux

if you have r/w access to the XP disk from Lunix, you can copy successfully (assuming the HD is good)

1. you can not edit the XP registry in Linux
2. you can copy a system restore point so as to make the registry valid again

Linux will mount an XP NTFS hd. The default will be R/O and you can copy off
whatever you need to save.

I recovered My Pictures using this technique

Actually it does run in Linux, but my question is how to reinstate the userinit.exe file.

Nice link and helpful information. Thanks.