Hard Drive (Partition Problems)

[Guest_imported]

Hello. A friend of mine is having problems with his hard drive. He created several partitions on one drive, now here is the problem. He was playing a game in 2000 Pro, some how he got booted from the game to his desktop. There was some obscure error message, forced him to reboot. He then found out his E: was a bunch of jibbersh, not legible. Now heres the catch, DOS and Windows 98 both see E: and can read files off of it. Just XP and 2000 Pro seem to think E: is damaged or corrupted. He is really out of ideas, as am I.

 

[Techtony]

The drive is probably FAT16. W2K can read FAT32 and NTFS only.

 

[teknoguy]

are you dual booting?? sounds like it.
whats your booting configuration??
run scan disk.. there might be problem on the drive.

 

[Guest_imported]

I'm sorry to disagree with you Techtony, but my W2K PRO NTFS system can read and write to a FAT16 formatted second disk (DOSv6.22 and WINv3.11) with no problems. So I don't think that's the issue here...

What does W2K Disk Management (under Computer Management) say about the "jibberish" drive/partition?

Also, probably a silly question, but if as has been suggested, you're dual-booting, are you absolutely sure that W2K and XP are seeing the same partition (you quoted as E:\>) as W98 and DOS?

ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[Guest_imported]

Sorry for the confusion. No, it wasn't a dual boot situation. He crashed in 2000 Pro, the partition upon reboot was in-accessible, he then formated the boot partition and installed Windows 98 on it. He then could read that partition, so he then again installed Windows 2000 Pro, which could not read the partition. He then installed Windows XP in hopes of it reading the partiton.

Thanks for any and all help regarding this problem.

 

[Guest_imported]

From what you say, I'm guessing you have at least three partitions, probably C: D: and E:. If you boot up on the A: drive and run FDISK, what does it tell you about the file system for the E: partition?

Is there still data on this E: drive that you need to retain, or can the partition be wiped if necessary? If there's data you need, then recovering that should be your first priority before experimenting with any other op system on C: drive. If not, then either remove and reinstate partition, format etc., or try something like Norton Utilities.

ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[cdogg]

Like Roger mentioned, you'd be better off reformatting the E: partition. If it was me, I would re-install 98, since you claim this OS can read that partition. Then, move all the data from E: over to another partition (preferably D. Then format E: and move the data back over.

Hopefully after re-installing Win2K, you won't have any more problems...

 

[sappledo]

I installed Windows XP on top of Windows 98. Prior to the XP installation (and after) my first of two physical drives was logically partitioned. The 2nd physical drive has only one partition. My system is running fine.

I no longer want to have the first of the two physical drives logically partitioned. How do I delete the 2nd (no data on it) partition and add its space to the first logical partition?

Alternatively, how can I resize the 2nd logical partition to a very small amount and use the space in the 1st logical partition?

BTW, I believe some temporary files are written to the 2nd logical partition and I don't know which (maybe Windows XP) programs use the 2nd partition.

 

[tlcscousin]

Admin tools computer management disk management look for the partition in question in the pane on the right, right click on it and select delete partition or format.