lost partition

[mgam]

Hi,have a problem with harddrive that has two partitions.
Went to install office 2000 on a win98.whan it finished installin i found that none off the icons on the desktop would open.Then i went into My Computer(the two partitions were named c and d and the cd-rom drive was names e.
But d was replaced with cd-rom drive! cannot find the second partition anywhere! can only be seen in fdisk.
the hard drive is 10gig.the 'c' partition was 2gig and d partition was 8 gig approx.
Previous to all this-i used a freeware that would clean dll files not in use - not delete them -just but them in a folder so that the system would work better-i think it was called 'clean system'.anyhow on reboot i got a 'invalid system disk'error message-it looks like system file had been deleted by the freeware - so tried everything to boot up-includin boot disk etc.and had no luck - eventuaaly got it in safe mode and deledet the c partition and re-installed the o.s on it.all this was just minutes prior to the first problem mentioned.I really need help - because the stuff that was on the 'd' partition wasn't backed up and is very important.Fujitsu-siemens scenic 300 is the make of machine.

 

[Nathan123]

Try booting from your boot up disk, but make sure that your CMOS boot first from your floppy drive and enable floppy drive seek. After booting from your boot up disk run fdisk and check the condition of your partition, if both are ok then we are in business. Reformat your drive c and reinstall windows, after disk I'm sure you can access then your d drive. By reformating your c drive you will be introducing a new set of dll and drivers that will help your system detect your d drive. Dont worry this will not delete any files from your d drive. Please read the everything during the reinstallation process so that you wont make any mistakes. Good Luck.

 

[mgam]

Thanks for your help,i'm going to try it out disevening-fingers crossed! I'l let you know how i got on!Do you know why this would have happened anyhow? - just curious!

 

[wolluf]

mgam,

you'll probably need a data recovery app -

free one

http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm

couple of commercial ones

http://www.webattack.com/features/premiere.php?id=104372&r=h

http://www.runtime.org/gdb.htm

The second partition will have been an extended partition. What may have happened is when you deleted its primary partition to reinstall windows, the extended partition info in the partition table was removed too (or became useless, and primary partition gone). Creating new primary pertition didn't recreate extended. Its also possible (I have seen this occasionally) that if you use fdisk to create a new extended partition & drive within it as before the 'missing' partition may 'appear'. One thing - as long as you don't format and start reusing area where partition was, the data shaould be untouched and available for recovery with the right tool.

 

[mgam]

Re-installing of the O.S does not work. Partition is still missing.

Any other ideas.

Thanks

 

[wolluf]

mgam - did you read my post?

 

[plewis68]

Hi mgam. not sure this will work but check your autoexec.bat file and look for a line like the one below;

C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\MSCDEX /D:MSCD001

at the end you see the /D:MSCD001, if yours has the /D change it to /E. There's also one in the config.sys file also that looks like;

DEVICE=C:\CDROM\SSCDROM.SYS /D:MSCD001 /PIO

Change that /D to /E and reboot and see what happens. I doubt this wil work but its worth a try I guess.

Patrick

 

[edfair]

wolluf
;>)

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.