Help! Partition Magic 7.0 problem!

[Egekrusher]

I had two partitions on my main drive, C: and E:.
C: was a Windows 98 installation and E: was windows 2K.
I reformatted C: because I just built a low power mp3/dvd machine and didn't need 98 anymore. Then I merged it with my E: partition. Rebooted, applied changes, then nothing happened.
C: was my primary DOS partition, E: was extended. Now it is just C: (because of the merging). I can't boot into anything. Anyone know a workaround for this? I have 20 gigs of data on that drive that I NEED.
P.S.- I went in and set the merged drive (C to active, still nothing. I think I need to somehow either make E: the primary partition or I need to rewrite the bootsector on the disk. Any help here would be much appreciated.

 

[wolluf]

So what you hope you've got is a single partition with win2k on it? Is it FAT32 or NTFS? If its FAT32, you can boot from a win98 boot floppy to 'see' the data on it. If its NTFS, you'll need something like ntfsdos from

http://www.sysinternals.com

to see data from a boot floppy (see if \winnt folder is still visible - if its not, then suggestion below won't work).

I don't know if your win2k installation is recoverable (what you did wasn't very clever for leaving a bootable operating system), but this is what I'd do:-

Create a win2k boot floppy. Format floppy & copy files ntldr & ntdetect.com (on 2k install CD if no longer on or accessible from your hard drive) & boot.ini to it. Create a boot.ini looking like this (using notepad or similar) if you haven't got one:-

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

Boot from floppy & see if it loads your win2k system.

If it does, you should be able to fix system by running recovery console (boot from 2k install disk & choose repair using recovery console - you'll need administrator password), copy same 3 files to root of C:, then run fixboot command (type help for list of commands in recovery console). Win2k should start on reboot (type exit).

If this doesn't work, you could try reinstalling 2k on top of itself in existing partition (may not be possible - win2k install process may think the PM created partition is damaged or corrupted & say you can only continue if it formats it - if this happeds, obviously don't do this as you would loose all your data).

Or of course, you could install disk in another PC to retrieve data you want.

 

[Egekrusher]

Thanks a lot man. This sounds like it will work. It now can find the OS, but can't find ntldr. This is after running fdisk /mbr, fixmbr, and fixboot. I really don't want to have to reload over 50 programs (20 gigs of JUST program files).

 

[wolluf]

Yes you'll need to copy ntldr, ntdetect.com & boot.ini to root of C: