Help! WinXP Boot Sector deleted??

Stiabhna

Hi,

I did something REALLY stupid at the weekend and am hoping that someone can help me.

The situation was as follows:

I had been running XP on my machine for a long time now. A few months ago, I installed Partition Magic to create a new partition to install Win ME (for compatibilty reasons).

Since I no longer use ME, I decided to delete and merge the partitions at the weekend. I called up Partition Magic and, as far as I can remember, there were three partitions - one smaller one (I think 8 MB), a larger one (with XP, I presume), and a third (with ME).

I deleted the ME partition but I think I also deleted the first one too. Now, when I start the PC, I get the message that no OS can be found.

Does anyone know if I can get to my data without having to reformat and reinstall Win XP?

I'd be really grateful for any help!!

Cheers,

Stephen

PS: Naturally, I hadn't created a WinXP recovery disk!!

SantaHoe

You could try booting from the WinXP CD and chosing the recovery console option.
There are a few commands that might be of help.
fixboot
fixmbr
You'll need to know your administrator password, the one you set when you installed XP, not just any old admin account password.

You might also have 'killed' your active (bootable) partition.
A partition magic rescue disk might be able to help you there.
Or maybe you could set your current partition active through fdisk.

If there are things on the drive that you really don't want to lose, I'd suggest installing your harddrive as a secondary drive in another machine and pulling your important data off it, just incase.

Stiabhna

Thanks for the quick reply.

When I boot from the WinXP CD, it lists the CD Drive as the C: Drive (I can only access the CD drive and the floppy).

The Partition Magic rescue disk only reports one partition that is DEFECTIVE. Do you reckon I'll have to reformat the drive??

BTW, is FDISK on the WinXP installation CD?

Cheers,

Stephen

SantaHoe

You'll find fdisk on a Win9x boot disk or CD.
It's a basic text-based partitioning tool.
I don't like the sound of that "DEFECTIVE" report though, what I'd do is install the harddrive as a second drive in another machine, see if you can access it and backup your data from it... or at least to run the full partition magic program and see if it can fix the partition.
I guess it all depends on how badly you want to avoid reformatting, even though it may yet be inevitable.

But that's just my opinion, maybe someone else has a better solution... sit tight and weigh up the options.

Sleipnir

it's showing your CD-ROM as drive C because the XP partition would have been NTFS. Fdisk will show this as a "non-DOS" partition.
The boot information was obviously stored on the 8MB partition. This told the system that the OS was on either of the other two partitions.
You could trry reinstalling another OS (like Winnt, Win2k or XP) onto the old ME partition. then you could boot up and access the XP NTFS partition and get your data off.
Or you may be able to then edit the boot.ini file to include you're original XP installation as bootable.
You won't be able to access the NTFS partition with 95, 98 or ME as they do not recognise NTFS.

Stiabhna

Thanks for the tips. What I don't understand, however, is that if I use the WinXP installation CD to boot the system and go to the DOS level, why can't I view the contents of the hard disk?

S.

SantaHoe

Well you'd be using a Win9x bootdisk/CD to get to the DOS environment, everything needed to initialise DOS will be stored on that bootdisk and can be loaded independantly of the harddrive.

Stiabhna

Hi - me again

Right, I tried the recovery console option but the WinXP CD then asks me to insert my recover CD - which I don't have!

So I decided to install XP in the old ME partition.

I've managed to get setup to copy the relevant files to the Windows installation folder. It then says it needs to reboot to continue (instructing me to remove any disk in the A drive).

However, when the PC restarts, setup does not continue from where it went off - it starts again from the beginning.

If I try to reboot without the installation CD in the drive, I get the ususal message about no operating system found.

Surely, setup fixes the MBR??!!

Yours in desperation,

S.

maxheadroom

try knoppix and see if it can look at any of your files. If so, I'd reccommend using it to create a fat32 partition where WinMe used to be, back up your files there, delete the Win XP partition and let XP setup recreate one starting at the beginning of the disc. You need to have an active partition in the first 1024 cylinders of the disc for it to be bootable, IIRC.

Stiabhna

Hi,

Sorry, couldn't get into the board earlier on...

Right, the latest state of play is as follows:

Deleted ME partition and installed XP in it. Everything worked wonderfully. XP recognizes my old XP partition but says it is unformatted. Partition Magic also says the partition is unformatted.


Now, I am certain that I never reformatted my old XP partition - one of the only things I'm certain of at this stage!!

I have read elsewhere on the net that other people have solved this problem by hooking up the hard drive to a different PC and using a program called getdataback (90 euro) to recover the data.

Does anyone know of an easier way? The only PC I could hook my hard disk up to is an old Win 98 machine!

Max: I thought knoppix was a linux utility. Can I run it under XP too? Do I have to run it in protected mode??

Sorry for ALL the questions,

S.

maxheadroom

knoppix is a bootable linux CD - it runs an entire linux o/s off your CD drive.

I had a similar problem a while back, I ended up just plumping for Getdataback. There is a really complicated way to fix this manually (using linux tools) but I was never able to understand it...

GUI

this is your easiest option

create a special boot disk..

you just need 3 files

ntldr, ntdetect.com , boot.ini

now depending on where you have installed windows c:\ d:\
on what phsyical disk and partition that is..

that will have to be reflected in boot.ini

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

is default for c:\

alternatively you can try the boot disk without any boot.ini (thats if u have installed windows to c:\)
it defaults to c:\ if you have no boot.ini

this should get you back into windows.

if windows is not installed to c:\
then its trial and error modifying boot.ini to point to the correct partition

GUI

explanation of problem

there were three partitions - one smaller one (I think 8 MB), a larger one (with XP, I presume), and a third (with ME).

now depending on your original configuration

you had a dual boot loader?

you might just have had the master boot loaders containg on the ME partition..
this is the reason why you get no OS found..

if the floppy doesnt work..
make sure the partition is the active primary partition on the drive..

if the floppy does work..
when in windows
copy the 3 files from the floppy to c:\
and that should be problem permanetly resolved..

Stiabhna

Hi,

Yep. I had a dual boot loader - Boot Magic.

Got overwritten last night when I installed Win XP on the old ME partition.

Right, if I've understood you correctly: I start WinXP (on ME partition - the only one that works), get a floppy disk and copy the files ntldr, ntdetect.com , boot.ini to the floppy disk.

Then I reboot. BTW, my default drive is now (where the new WinXP is installed). The drive that is not recognised as formatted is listed as E: under WinXP.

Sorry for being so dippy, but where do I go from here?

S.

GUI

lemme think about it now..
u kinda screwed up the original solution now..

its a bit more complex now..
it will involve using a utility called powerquest bootmagic..

i will be back tonight and give u what a resolution i think will work