Corrupt XP install

EirePlane · 26 Apr 2007 at 22:13

Installed Solaris last night and it's messed up my windows install. once it was installed, the vista bootloader failed to load XP.
I have run fixboot and fixmbr from the install disk and still not working.
After that, it started telling me it couldn't find NTLDR, so I copied that from the install disk too as well as ntdetect.com but I was still getting the same message

I have since done a fresh install on another drive and can get access to everything in the corrupt install except my User folder in "Documents and Settings" (access is denied). I got curious and decided to take a look at it in the disk manager which is showing it as a Logical Partition E:\ (It was a physical partition before with drive letter C:\)

Is there any way of getting this corrupt install to work again? I really dont want to lose all my work and settings

Cheers,
Mitchel

EirePlane · 27 Apr 2007 at 18:15

Thanks, that got me access to the folder.
I tried running fixboot and fixmbr again but it seems to have corrupted the MBR, now neither drive will boot and Windows will not install. I am currently typing this on a liveCD of Ubuntu.
My BIOS does not detect the hard drives anymore and neither does GParted, Ubuntu's disk manager however does (although it shows up as having no partitions)
is there:
A: any way of recovering data from the drive and putting it onto another drive
B: Any way of getting the drives working again? (maybe wiping them and creating a blank MBR???)

Any help greatly appreciated
Cheers,
Mitchel

EirePlane · 27 Apr 2007 at 18:25

tried that. that seems to be what ruined it in the first place :rolleyes:

EirePlane · 28 Apr 2007 at 00:36

thanks, using partition magic has at least got the drive showing up again but now when I try too boot from it it says "Disk Read Error. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart" just after POST