Win Xp / partition problem

[brarnold]

I have a friend's computer that he wants to recover 4 gig of music, but it won't boot. I looked at it and I saw the error "Win/sys32/config/system" ok easy fix so I went into the recovery console and it came up to c:\ so I did a "dir" and nothing was there...invalid path. I went the other route to try a repair and when it got to the partition area it says "partition unkown".... He has no idea how this happened. I have tried FIXBOOT, chkdsk /R, (stopped at 36%...unrecoverable problems) fdisk /mbr won't work... Any miracles out there?

Thanks!

 

[Binnit]

Have you at any time recently tried to install another O/S or reinstall XP?

I had a similar problem see faq779-5234 although of course this may not be the same scenario.


If IT ain’t working Binnit and Reboot

 

[brarnold]

No will that wipe out the data? Do you mean to reinstall over the other w/o format?

 

[jimp56]

before making any significant changes download a copy of the "getdataback" program and run it to see if it can see the drive well enough to recover data. this is an easy way to get a general diagnosis of the drive's condition. of course you will have to put the drive in another pc or create a boot cd-rom (UBCD) with getdataback on it.

if getdataback cannot see the drive well enough to recover files, then most likely it would require professional data recovery. If it can see it well enough, then there may be hope for other recovery methods without having to buy/license the program.

 

[micker377]

Have you tried the Hard Drive's manufacturer's diagnostic program?

 

[bcastner]

Try it under a PE environment.
faq779-5362

 

[wolluf]

Would agree with jimp56 - you need a data recovery app, the drive is probably failing, so the sooner the better.

Alternatively, if no joy with data recovery - you could try buying spinrite, which claims to be able to repair/recover ntfs partitions where other utilities can't (and has a fair few endorsements to this effect).

 

[s0121]

No will that wipe out the data? Do you mean to reinstall over the other w/o format?

TO simply repair or re install XP over XP... only wipes out Windows& all windows related programs, it does nothing to any of the other programs. over 95% of all failures which I repair are repaired by REPAIRING any Windows OS. SE, ME, XP. on XP many times using SFC will fix the corrupted system files...

Frank Smith irc.dhcnetwork.com

SomeWhere in Kansas Near Dodge City