MFT Corrupt - File or Directory unreadable

[Guest]

MFT Corrupt - File or Directory unreadable


In my company, I have setup two computers with Volume release Vista fresh on
HD and then 2 other computers with Dual Boot XP and Vista.

When launching XP on the dual boot computers, i have two partitions that
appear 'File or

Directory is corrupted or unreadable'. But i can see these partitions fine
in Vista.

I have a 160GB Seagate IDE hard drive in these 2 dual boot computer with
partitions as

follows :

C:\ FAT32 40GB Windows XP
D:\ NTFS 40GB Vista
E:\ NTFS 40GB Test Apps
F:\ NTFS 40GB Test Apps2

I have just installed the Volume License release of Windows Vista Ultimate
on Drive D. I

selected upgrade install and a fresh drive D:\ to Install to. Boot Loader
has now got XP

and Vista.
Booting into Vista i got an error when the Taskbar was running, c:\$MFT (or
C:\$MSFT)

corrupt.

Booting into Vista is does a Chkdsk on drives E & F, but when in Vista these
drives can be

seen and all the files are intact.

Boot into Windows XP it does Chkdsk as well, launch explorer, drives E & F
display as Local

Disk and an error stating 'File or Directory is corrupted or unreadable'

(1) How do do i rebuild the MFT ?
(2) Is their any way in XP to get the names of these partitions back. ( I
have used Acronis

and the Names and files appear on the drive, its just XP doesnt want to show
them ).

Can anyone help ?

 

[John John]

I would suggest backing up your files from within Vista. The MFT has an
MFT mirror (copy) that is used by the file system to repair MFT errors.
If you get error messages involving MFT corruption the only fix might
be to rebuild the drive. It would be a good idea to run a drive
diagnostic utility to find out if the drive is in a good state, it might
be on its last leg.

John

 

[Kerry Brown]

Backup your data and delete all partitions. Reinstall XP creating a
partition for XP during the installation. Reinstall Vista creating a
partition for Vista during the installation. Run the disk management console
in Vista and create any other partitions you want. Restore your data. Do not
use any third party partition managers to create the partitions.

 

[Guest]

Kerry,

I did not use Acronis for creating the drives. I was using Disk Director to
try and recover the Drives but their names show in Acronis but in XP they
appear as local disk and cannot be accessed.

Drives were partitioned using Windows XP. Win XP is on C:\. I installed
Vista onto D:\. Vista launch on taskbar it states c:\$mft is corrupt. Then
everytime i boot into Windows chdks runs when selecting XP or Vista. XP the
drives E & F appear as 'Local Disk' and clicking on them states 'File or
Diretory is corrupt or unreadable'

I have completely wiped all drives off this disk, put XP on C:\ again and
created other partitions D, E, F. Ran Seagate Seatools against drive and
checked Smart details, no errrors. Installed Vista to D:\ again. Launch
Vista, error appears on taskbar C:\MFT corrupt.

(1) Does Microsoft have a way to rebuild the MFT of XP, using repair ?

At present my company has customers that are requesting this dual boot
functionality and we ship aceesisiblity hardware & software. At present this
issue is stopping me progressing recommeding XP & Vista on dual boot.

(2) How do i log a bug to Microsoft about this ?

 

[Kerry Brown]

I know it's not the answer you want to hear but it is something to do with
your system. I have setup dual and triple boots with XP, Vista, and Linux
during the beta phase of Vista. Currently I have a dual boot setup with
Vista and Windows Server 2003. They have all worked with no mft errors or
any disk related errors. I suspect the disk controller driver for Vista but
without ohysically troubleshooting it would be hard to tell. What
motherboard and what disk controller on that board is the drive hooked up
to? Another strong possibilty is bad RAM. Try the same setup on a different
computer to make sure it's not something wrong with the setup. From what you
have described I really suspect the setup is fine and it's a driver or
hardware issue.