I need the NTFS partition back

[arguello]

I made a big mistake trying to repare my HD. I have Win2k platform in a Toshiba Laptop with NTFS partition in the HD. I was trying to install a new drivers for my CD-RW and installing a new burnning SW. I used Regcleaner to erase some entries from the former burnnin SW, when I restart the Laptop, I got a message in a blue screen with some message like "invalid boot info in HD" (I do not remember). The fact is that I used the Norton Anti Virus rescue Floppy Disks and restore the partition and boot information and after that I realized that those NAV FDs were created when the Laptop had Win98 (Here the big mistake). Now I see the HD identifyed with FAT32 instead of NTFS and I can´t start Win2k. I do not want loose the disk data and I want reinstall de Win2k. What can I do to solve this big problem?. I will appreciate any help.

Thanks in advance,

Luis

 

[karmic]

Sounds like only the boot sector has been changed... You may want to try a quick repair installation of windows 2000.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows200...=/windows2000/en/server/help/recovery_erd.htm

Good luck... ~ The day I think I know it all, i'm changing careers ~

 

[wolluf]

arguello,

Unfortunately it sounds like the NAV disks have overwritten the partition table. You would need to restore the partition table to exactly what it was under 2k to have a chance of rescuing the 2k install (ie, you'd need to have an image you could write back to the MBR with the correct partition table, or directly edit the partition table in the MBR - for which you would need to know the exact hex/binary values to put there - and where the partition table is located (this last info is available on the net).
btw - when the NAV disks restore, they don't back up exisitng mbr first by any chance?

Assuming restoring/editing the partition table is out, your best bet is a data recovery app. If you can load the drive in another machine (you can get adapters to allow notebook drives to be connected to PCs), and run a data recovery app from there, you may retrieve your data. To find a suitable data recovery app, try a Google search (probably cost you $30+). There are free ones, but generally don't work as well with ntfs as fat and especially with partition table gone.