Messed Up Partitions - ntldr missing!

[guiado]

I have four partitions, in order - ntfs (data storage - empty), ntfs (winxp), ntfs (data storage - empty) and Linux on my dual boot machine. I am running out of space on my winxp partition and decided(!) to make it larger by merging with the other two ntfs partitions.(Actually I have a 2nd HD that I use for backup - the two data storage partitions are empty because I copied the data to my backup disk prior to the merging). I used Partition Magic to do the merging and initially merged the 2nd and 3rd partitions - the 1st partition is a lot smaller than the 2nd and 3rd partitions but in an awkward position being the first partition on the disk. I thought it had merged an rebooted - now when I select my winXP OS I get the dreaded ntldr is missing message. I have created a Partition Magic boot CD and when I look at my disk I see the original four separate partitions but to me they (the ntfs partitions) have strange drive letters. The 1st partition is C, the 2nd is D and the 3rd is E. I can see the partition contents from my Linux partition. The 1st(c) is empty, the 2nd(D) contains wnxp and the 3rd(E) is also empty - all as they were originally. I have inserted my winxp CD and gone to the Recovery Console - I get the 1. C:\windows and choose 1 followed by the Admin password but instead of getting c:\windows> I get e:\windows>. Via my Linux OS I can see D drive and there are all my winxp files including ntldr so it all looks good - I'm thinking all the drive letters are out of sync but no too sure what to do now. Any suggestions what to do now and how would be most appreciated.

 

[guiado]

I thought of using Clonezilla to backup D where my winxp data is onto my backup 2nd HD. Then delete and merge all three ntfs partitions in to one large partition. Then use Clonezilla to copy D back to my new large ntfs partition on HD 1. Is this a good/stupid strategy or is there another/better way?

 

[guiado]

bump

 

[goombawaho]

No bumping. Backup data, start over/reload.

 

[rclarke250]

I concur. Pull the data you can off onto a good drive, and than lay down the partitions again, and start over. It's just easier, less time consuming.

 

[Freestone]

Are you able to browse the normally hidden file boot.ini in the root of your broken XP partition? You will certainly have to be able to edit this file if you implement your plan of using Clonezilla. I would think at this point it should read

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP" /fastdetect
C:\ = "Microsoft Windows"

Unless you really need to know what is broke, I agree with the others' suggestion of backup data, repartition, reload.