XP wont boot after changing to dynamic disk!

demanufactured

I stupidly tried to change the hard disk in my system to dynamic instead of basic (was doing it as its what i was studying in my course work atm)

Now XP pro wont boot , just get a flashing cursor in the corner.
I tried going into the recovery console m i ran FIX boot and FIXMBR.

Niether worked.


Im running the active boot CD now tryint to recover my partititons....

Any one have any other ideas here , I have Hirens boot CD 10.4 and Ultimate boot cd aswell if they are any use , i tried a couple of recovery tools on Hirens but they couldnt see the disks.

ronkmonster

Boot from your XP disc into the recovery console and try this



you might want to take a backup image of the disk first though

EDIT, oh you have to delete everything to get that link to work

Looks like there is no easy way to convert back unless you want to buy a tool for it.
http://www.dynamic-disk.com/convert-dynamic-disk-to-basic.html
option 3 but I don't know if you need to be able to boot into windows

demanufactured

ronkmonster wrote: »

Boot from your XP disc into the recovery console and try this



you might want to take a backup image of the disk first though

EDIT, oh you have to delete everything to get that link to work

??

ronkmonster

demanufactured wrote: »

??

Sorry I removed the link just in case you tried to use it

demanufactured

no worries , its gonna take a while for the recovery program im using to scan the whole disk , not sure what i can do after that,youd think a trainee tech would know better.....

ronkmonster

I think I did that years ago too We all make mistakes. Does the warning not say what will happen?

demanufactured

No , in fact i watched a video of some one doing it (part of my course material)

And he rebooted no problem.

ronkmonster

demanufactured wrote: »

No , in fact i watched a video of some one doing it (part of my course material)

And he rebooted no problem.

Was it the boot disk? or a second drive

demanufactured

ronkmonster wrote: »

Was it the boot disk? or a second drive

the boot disk

ronkmonster

Hmmm not sure. I broke my windows by doing it before though.
Virtual machines are handy for testing thing out in though (I use virtualbox). Snapshots even let you undo stuff

Download a Linux Mint CD and boot from it. You might be able to see your files from it.

demanufactured

I managed to repair the C: partition and boot into windows, all fine there, , im now running the recovery program again and hoping i can recover the other partiitions

ronkmonster

What tool are you using?

demanufactured

ronkmonster wrote: »

What tool are you using?

Im using a boot CD called the Active Boot Disk Win

lots of tools on it for recovery and killdisk , also password removers.

ronkmonster

demanufactured wrote: »

Im using a boot CD called the Active Boot Disk Win

lots of tools on it for recovery and killdisk , also password removers.

Is it free/paid/dodgy?

demanufactured

to be honest i dont know , probably dodgy, but it recovered all my partitions back to a fully working state , thats all i care about.

demanufactured

http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm