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Help an IT guy.... WindowsXP and the Hard Drive hangover.

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout' started by Sonny, Feb 7, 2003.

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  1. Sonny

    Sonny Member

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    Well last night I go to reinstall XP which has been a big POS lately.

    My home machine has two hard drives, a 40gb and an 80gb.

    The 40gb is the C:\ with the OS.

    The 80gb is the D:\ with files,etc.

    The problem started when I didn't have a boot disk to reinstall (which I later found online). I pulled out this old WindowsMe reinstall disk that came with my Dell and I treid booting from it and planned to cancel out to get to a DOS prompt so I could launch the setup for WindowsXP and FDISK or whatever. Well the install for WindowsME failed, said it couldn't read the hard drive, so that didn't work.

    Well when I went back into WindowsXP it still saw the C: and D: but now it can't read the D:\. It ask me if I want to format it, like the damn WindowsMe setup screwed with the Master Boot Record or something.

    So my question is, what utilites can I run to fix this? Partition Magic or something? I can't mess with the drive in windows and I don't know what to use in DOS, I have to be able to edit the MBR to get my data back right?

    Anyone ever had this problem? Calling X34 or any IT dudes!
     
    #1 Sonny, Feb 7, 2003
  2. codell

    codell Member

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    Sonny,

    Did your system come with a recovery disk for WIndows XP?
     
    #2 codell, Feb 7, 2003
  3. Sonny

    Sonny Member

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    My system is a little over 2yrs old and was built with WinMe.

    A recovery disk wouldn't help, I don't think it is an OS thing, I think it is a problem with the disk (mbr).
     
    #3 Sonny, Feb 7, 2003
  4. Cohen

    Cohen Member

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    Are you sure? Maybe the D drive is formatted NTFS from XP, and ME cannot read it.
     
    #4 Cohen, Feb 7, 2003
  5. jxu777

    jxu777 Member

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    If you are sure that is the MBR problem, you have several ways to fix it. Two of them are:

    1. With a DOS botable disk, at a DOS C:> prompt, do "FDISK /MBR". Reboot your machine. Or,

    2. You should have a companiom CD from your retail hard drives. Normally the CD is bootable and contains a utility to fix the MBR. Run that utility according to the on-screen instructions or help.

    If it still doesn't work, you are screwed:cool: But there is always a way to get your data back. Just don't re-format it.
     
    #5 jxu777, Feb 7, 2003
  6. Sonny

    Sonny Member

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    thanks guys, got it fixed. I had to edit the MBR on the second disk. Cool stuff. The WinME setup changed the MBR to a dynamic disk, when it was orginally NTFS. When I changed the sector and rebooted it came back up.

    I found this guys page, had some awesome info and I used the 2000 and NT4 resource kit utilities to edit the MBR and it came back up. Yes! :)
     
    #6 Sonny, Feb 8, 2003
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