CIFS and Windows Server 2003

Today I had an incident this morning (which, as of the time of writing this, I am still working on) where a Windows XP machine decided to BSOD with the UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME.

Doesn't surprise me to see that the KB article above won't help me fix this issue as I found out a few hours later that there was a power surge from the night before!!!

So to fix this I (naturally) fired up a Linux distro (this time it was Knoppix

Next up I begin receiving this error when trying to connect to mapped network drives for storage of the recovered data using smbmount(8)...

    cli_negprot: SMB signing is mandatory
    4650: protocol negotiation failed
    SMB connection failed

Well, after about 5 minutes of pulling my hair out while googling for a solution, I found the answer!!! CIFS! I thought that smbmount(8) was broken (I've had some bad experience in the past) however it seems that if if you use CIFS instead it will happily connect to a Windows 2003 Server file share!!

Now if only I could get all this data recovered :P

Time to call Dell for a replacement HDD (gotta love their support) and purchase one in the interim...