Fat from Fat 32?

[claymca]

I have just recently reinstalled Windows XP because the start-up takes like ten mins for some reason. After reinstall probelm still exsits. But my main problem is that after reinstall my 2nd hard drive went from Fat32 to Fat now windows XP is not reading the drive and all my folders on the drive are named all wrong. Example instead of saying Music the name of the folder now looks like this:\paEf-n.2rk and also it is only a 20GB drive and is showing total size to be over 60GB I already tried to change to NTFS but no success. Any help.

 

[isselt]

Have you checked your BIOS settings ? Auto deteckt?
Then look during the startup to the detection of the HDD's
Are the types and sizes right ?
It seem you used another HDD before and now you have replaced it for a FAT type with a different size and you don't changed the BIOS.

Most systems don't understand such handlings
The PC tries to translate the HDD info to you
and makes soupe of it because it's expecting another type size etc. also clustersizes may be different.

If all this is not set wrong by you, you can try
Partition Magic (powerquest) to change it into FAT32.
But i'm afraid you loose your current information on
the HDD.

Succes

 

[claymca]

Yes I have used auto detect and the sizes are right. I just reinstalled Windows XP over itself and used the same drives as before no chnges in them. It just somehow on its own converted to a Fat and that was not what it was before.

 

[isselt]

It's possible that the BootMasterRecord
is damaged, that can cause troubles
like the 10 minutes boot.
If you already tried scandisk, maybe
chkdsk /f can give the right info.
(from command line, like old dos)
Reinstalling XP is not a good method.
Normally you can go back to previous
settings in XP, that's the only way back.
REinstalling is asking for trouble.
Old and new settings can become mixed-up.
going back seems not possible anymore so
just format all drives and then a full new
installation. (Thanks to BillyG)
Don't forget the activation key.

To prevent these problems in the future :
Make an image with a program like Drive
Image pro and you can restore this config
at any time you like with no interferrence
of BillyG.

If the BMR is really physically damaged
then i thinks it's game-over.

Luck

 

[wolluf]

You could have an unrelated hardware problem - hardware problems can cause software to act oddly - like see a drive wrong. Have you another machine you can put troublesome drive in to see if its recognised ok there are not?

You could also get integrity check utility from manufacturers website.

XP's recovery console has a fixmbr command (similar to fdisk /mbr from win98 floppy) which rewrites a fresh master boot record (but doesn't touch partition table - so if that's corrupt it will do no good - but won't do any harm either).

Have you scanned for viruses (particularly boot sector viruses).

PS. Doing a repair reinstall of XP is often a VERY GOOD way of resolving problems - it doesn't mix up old and new settings - it keeps your original settings, apps & data intact.

 

[firewolfrl]

I agree with wolluf.
uninstall the drive
full reboot to the operating system
shutdown
use the manufacturer of the motherboard info to reset the BIOS. (usually it is a jumper on the board)
reboot the machine and go to the BIOS options and redo the time and any other custom setting you had before (CPU,memory settings,etc...)
full reboot
shutdown
install the drive
reboot
windows XP will take a few minutes and the will ask you to reboot the machine after it finds the drive
the drive should be back to normal
DO NOT ACCESS THE DRIVE TILL YOU REBOOT

 

[claymca]

Still no luck the drive is still being read as FAT. Partition Magic's Partition Info is saying it is a FAT 32.

" D:AUDIO "` ` FAT32X Pri,Boot 19,532.1 0 0 63 40,001,787
Unallocated Pri 7.8 None -- 40,001,850 16,065"

At start up the message I get from windows.:

Checking file system on D:
The type of the file system is FAT.


One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
The specified disk appears to be a non-Windows XP disk.
Do you want to continue? (Y/N) No

None of the suggestions have worked that I have tried. I don't want to lose the info on the drive. It's not that it is not working. I just need to know how did it go from fat 32 to just fat after a repair install of Windows XP.

 

[firewolfrl]

the partition record on the drive is corrupted.
read this thread.
thread751-418215 have to use third party software to get the info off the drive then zero out the drive (MBR, partition magic secure erase, etc...)
the whole drive needs to be completly deleted and rebuilt from the ground up.
good luck

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried the drive in another machine? (I suggested this earlier). Also you say 'None of the suggestions have worked that I have tried' - but you don't give details of what you have tried - so its difficult to continue making new suggestions. Please help us help you by eliminating what doesn't work.

 

[claymca]

The only other machine i have is xp also. Used Partition Magic to convert the drive to Fat 32 but it ran into a cross-linked file. Chkdsk /f will not fix it. and scan drive just freezes up.

 

[wolluf]

Reason for using other machine was in case you have hardware problem on current one causing misreading of partition - operating system doesn't matter.

I'd go for firewolfrl's rebuild after data recovery & zero fill.