I've had a mad weekend after my Vaio picturebook C1 died on an attempted 2K upgrade... Anyway I swapped out the disk to my desktop and did a lot of messy stuff... eventually being able to put the disk back in the Vaio and get Win2k to install..

HowEver: When I put my desktop PC (where I run BOINC) back together I had major problems..

During the install onto the VAIO disk I had left my desktop's main drive (NTFS XP) attached but as this was now an unseen secondary drive I gave it zero thought...

Bottom line is that my desktops main hard drive which was 8gig NTFS with XP now shows itself as 11gig and DOS FAT32.... (Shows the same directory structure as the vaio disk..) Basically I think something went wrong and the FAT \ boot sector from the Vaio drive got imprinted over it...

(I think the table has been overwritten but suspect not the actual files \ data..)

Anyone know how to repair an NTFS boot sector?

I'm going to try out NTFSRead tonight.

Any other suggestions?

Basically I don't care if I have to install XP again but I have a lot of data and documents I would like to salvage if possible..

Help :(


cRunchy

oing to try out NTFSRead tonight.
>
> Any other suggestions?
>
> Basically I don't care if I have to install XP again but I have a lot of data
> and documents I would like to salvage if possible..
>
> Help :(
>
>
> cRunchy
>

If that drive says it's a FAT32 and not NTFS you are flucked!!!

The two formats are not compatable at all...

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

Without seeing your BIOS settings as well it would be difficult to say the least.
You could select it to boot up from CD only and then reinstall the OS, but anything
on the HD is fair game for loss. To save stuff it is not possible to do on a message
board and difficult even over the phone.

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Account frozen...

The words "you're screwed" come to mind.

Is your machine runnable? Can you mount the XP disk on a different CPU?

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You can try to use the Windows XP repair process on the Windows XP CD.

What tool did you use to diagnose the current partition scheme? Generally I don't trust tools that are too old because they guess what it might be vs. what it really is. Once apon a time DOS's fdisk reported an NTFS partition as an HPFS ( Old OS/2 days ) partition.

If the XP CD reported the partition as FAT32, then its time to worry.

There are tools out there that can change boot partition data, such as Norton Disk Edit.

Its been a very long time since I've had to tweak the boot partition though, 10+ years.

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----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Your only hope is that the bios mis-read the drive specs.

If you can boot this from another CPU or make it the master drive and make sure the Drive Specs are correct you may beable to recover it..

Regardless you need to sink ME to the bottom of the deepest hole you can find...

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

Windows ME: The world's best-selling virus.
.o0(You were referring to Windows ME, right?)

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> Windows ME: The world's best-selling virus.
> .o0(You were referring to Windows ME, right?)
>
Who in the hell bought it?

Computer companies dumped in on the DA public
while kissing Bill's you know what.

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Account frozen...

Thanks Guys....

I'll just get a rope and tie the knot myself shall I :o)



Nothing to do with the BIOS which detects the HD parameters fine.

One thing to say for Win98 et al is that I can take any primary drive and dump it into any PC and get up and running within minutes... That for me is where XP & 2000 suck...


... Anyway how long did you say the rope was meant to be...


I'll be back...

cRunchy

> Thanks Guys....
>
> I'll just get a rope and tie the knot myself shall I :o)
>
>
>
> Nothing to do with the BIOS which detects the HD parameters fine.
>
> One thing to say for Win98 et al is that I can take any primary drive and dump
> it into any PC and get up and running within minutes... That for me is where
> XP & 2000 suck...
>
>
> ... Anyway how long did you say the rope was meant to be...
>
>
> I'll be back...
>
> cRunchy
>

long enough so when danging from an oak three you are at least 12 inches from the ground. Should ne one inch hemp. The knot should no more or less then 13 loops. Any less will prolog the agony and more could cause decapitation..

Who says you can't more an XP drive from PC to PC?? I better stop doing it then hahahaha

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

> 13 loops. Any less will prolog the agony
> and more could cause decapitation..

Now I think decapitation will not be too much on my mind after the deed :)

> Who says you can't more an XP drive from PC to PC?? I better stop doing it
> then hahahaha

The ones I tried wouldn't take.

I'm talking about distinctivly different machines. I set my vaio harddrive up with win98 on my PC and dumped it into my VAIO and it ran up with zero problems. The previous attempt with win2k just gave that blue screen with device unreadable... Even wouldn't take after I had unistalled all drivers back on the PC and created an alternate hardware profile before rebooting on the vaio..

The disk I am running now is an old 98\ME one I keep for such situations as the one I've just experienced and testing systems quickly.

If there is quick n easy 2K+ secret where hardware is distinctive I'd love to know.

Think its time I got a backup and file server sorted as I'm fed up of killing my data & docs.

cRunchy

If you can attach it as a secondary disk to a working NT/2000/XP machine, you should be able to get the data off if it is at all possible. Failing that, you need to try to get the XP CD to repair the HD. Of course, the last could irretrievably damage the HD formatting so that it is never retrievable. Of course if it is really FAT rather than the original NTFS, you are in for a difficult time.

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BOINC WIKI

> > 13 loops. Any less will prolog the agony
> > and more could cause decapitation..
>
> Now I think decapitation will not be too much on my mind after the deed :)
>
> > Who says you can't more an XP drive from PC to PC?? I better stop doing
> it
> > then hahahaha
>
> The ones I tried wouldn't take.
>
> I'm talking about distinctivly different machines. I set my vaio harddrive up
> with win98 on my PC and dumped it into my VAIO and it ran up with zero
> problems. The previous attempt with win2k just gave that blue screen with
> device unreadable... Even wouldn't take after I had unistalled all drivers
> back on the PC and created an alternate hardware profile before rebooting on
> the vaio..
>
> The disk I am running now is an old 98ME one I keep for such situations as the
> one I've just experienced and testing systems quickly.
>
> If there is quick n easy 2K+ secret where hardware is distinctive I'd love to
> know.
>
> Think its time I got a backup and file server sorted as I'm fed up of killing
> my data & docs.
>
> cRunchy
>

I am assuming that you have a Desktop Viao and not the laptop.

The problem is not the drive itself but with the controller. I have never had a problem moving disks from system to system with built in controllers. The chip sets for the built-in controllers are usually all from the same manufactors.

It does help if the bios is the same version on each system..

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

Usually this kind of repairs are done by using the recovery console.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314058

I would try to run the chkdsk /r first if you can access the drive.

(bootcfg can give you a list of the operation system on the drive and repair the boot.ini if needed.)

you got also fixmbr that could repair the master boot record.

and fixboot that will rewrite thew boot sector on the partition.

you could lose the data using the last two utilities.

please remember that your windows cd has to match the version that is on your drive ( xp or sp1 or sp2) if you don't have the proper cd use the floppy boot disk and get in the recovery console using those
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310994

[edit]
also two other utilities in the xp ressource kit
dmdiag.exe and dskprobe.exe

If you can attach it as a secondary disk to a working NT/2000/XP machine, you should be able to get the data off if it is at all possible.
That's the preferred method we used at the college labs - we had a dedicated Linux box that had all the filesystems and an open bay at the ready. You'd be amazed how many idiot CMP professors there are who not only installed, but bought WME.

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In a case like this, i'd get a knoppix disk, and open up a shell console.

and type

sudo su

testdisk

and let it fix the mbr.

If only the MBR is hooped, you can boot using SmartBootManager, and then use the checkdisk command from a command prompt.

Celtic Wolf,

> I am assuming that you have a Desktop Viao and not the laptop.

No a picturebook (C1vn).

> The problem is not the drive itself but with the controller. I have never had
> a problem moving disks from system to system with built in controllers. The
> chip sets for the built-in controllers are usually all from the same
> manufactors.

This was the basic problem and whilst there are lots of methods to prepare the disk for a move it is dependant on the recipient.. The Vaio is very very very proprietry :(

cRunchy

> Celtic Wolf,
>
> > I am assuming that you have a Desktop Viao and not the laptop.
>
> No a picturebook (C1vn).
>

OK disregard everything I said.. You are screwed!!! :)

If it was the desktop Vaio you might have had a chance. The only chance you have now is another picturebook and mounting this drive as the primary drive.

For the record all laptops are proprietary.... The disks in my Dell Inspiron can't go in my Vaio Laptop.. It's the Desktops that have inter-changable parts.. So I could take a disk from a Dell Desktop and put in the Vaio Desktop, regardless of the OS installed on the disk.

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I'd rather speak my mind because it hurts too much to bite my tongue.

American Spirit BBQ Proudly Serving those that courageously defend freedom.

Cheers guys,

Have been able to see and browse the NTFS directories using Active Partition Recovery but have not yet been able to copy over any of the files.

Basically the disk is showing up as fat32 though it is actually my XP primary boot drive... I have found some info on repairing a corrupt boot sector and nt file directory but nothing specific to my situation.

There are a few files (fat32) that had been cloned onto this drive erroneously and that has probably damaged (start of?) the XP NTFS partician.

I can access the disk (the fat32 files) if I place it as slave and either boot into the current winME on my master or use a floppy to boot. I haven't attempted any deletion or changes as that may kill the drive all together..

ReadNTFS should be able to copy off files but it can't see them as it expects a healthy NTFS disk.

I'm a bit closer but still miles away... However being able to see and browse the files (which still look intact) is promising...

Anyways.. got to get back to it...

cRunchy

cRunchy

Too many chefs spoil the broth. There are a few chefs here, some
fry cooks, and one greasy spoon specialist. Maxwell House anyone?

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Account frozen...