Fixboot problem!! Help!!!!

[SpeedGeek]

I have a HUGE PROBLEM.

ok. its like this.

I'm working with a 120GB Hard drive, devided in to 2 partitions, both NTFS, one for system (windows, program files ect.) and one for files (mp3's, videos, documents..)

3 hours ago i wanted to reblast my pc, it was working kind of slow and had too much stuff installed on it.. and it was time for a fresh start. i moved everything immportant to the second partition and rebooted from the windowsXP cdrom. i install the OS on partition one!

everything went great. windows was up and running in no time, and i even started installing my usual software on it.

while i was doing that, i went to my 2nd partition to see all the data is still intact, and it was. but wierd enough, there was an ntldr file there.

"ntldr?? why?? this is not the master partition? "
i thought to myself
"must be the remains from the old OS, better delete it"
and i deleted it!

of course when i rebooted windows didnt find the ntldr and wouldnt load.

ok, i thought, lets just go in the windows CDrom and use FixMBR,
did it, didnt work, so i tried, fixboot C:.
didnt work
Fixboot D:
didnt work

but not only did it not work!!
it made the D: drive (the 2nd partition where all my VERY IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS are INACCASABLE!

i just hooked up an old 40g hard drive just to see if i can access the other hard drive, and i sure can access the first partition, but when i try to access the 2nd one, i get the old "the disk is not formatted, would you like to format now?" massage.

please help, i am about to kill myself soon if i don't get an answer. I'm sure the data is still there. its just a matter of restoring the boot record or something.

please.

help.

thank you.



~ forgive my stupid questions ~

 

[WingDing]

What make/model is the hard drive? Is it ATA or Serial ATA?

Barton 2500+, 512MB Corsair Platinum XMS 3200 CL2, Radeon 9700, WD Raptor 10,000 rpm S-ATA HDD, Asus A7V600, Enermax 460W SilentPlus PSU.

 

[SpeedGeek]

its not related, this is not a hardware problem. but either way:

its a Western Digital 120GB 7200rpm with 8MB Cache and its regular ATA.

~ forgive my stupid questions ~

 

[ecar016]

try starting the computer with a win 98 disk.....
then transfer system to the inaccessible drive with the sys d: command.

this should transfer the mbr to d: and allow you to access info. If that works then try to reinstall xp without fdisk of formating and the drives might come back from the dead.

EC


<font color=red> Quantum Computers! - very interesting </font color=red>

 

[Jake_Barnes]

May be a stupid question, but you didn't by chance reformat as Fat 32 - Fat 32 won't recognize a NTFS partition. Just a thought.


<b> “Liberals have many tails and chase them all.” – H.L. Mencken <b>

 

[ZeuSueZ]

Sigh....I know the feeling - and i SUX!!

Well, here goes my best suggestions:

1.) Try booting on your XP cdrom, choose the revocery console, and run chkdsk with the following parameters: /p and accept 'fixboot' if it ask, and afterwards /r

2.) Try boot on a Win98 disk, and run fdsik with /mbr parameter.

3.) If nothing of the above helps, I'd install XP on c:, by deleting the partition inside the XP installer, so that your d: drive is untouched. Afterwards I'd use som sort of disk recovery util, but it's a long shot - I know.

Hope this helps, and that you retrive your data.

//Z

Real men don't do backup...
...real men cry ALOT!

Linux RoxX

 

[HolyGrenade]

Microsoft Knowledge base documents:

When you did, fixmbr, did you specify which partition? Look at this doc:
<A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314058" target="_new">Description of Windows XP recovery console</A>
I would guess, your windows installation defaulted to D: as the boot drive for whatever reason. You can try a fixmbr on both partitions.
eg. if the drive is the primary master ide dirve, and c: is the first partitions, you would do:
fixmbr multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)
etc.

You can search the MS Knowledge base to see if there are similar problems listed on there, but beyond that I can't be of much help. sorry.


<b><font color=red>"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."</font color=red><font color=blue> - Benjamin Franklin</font color=blue></b>