Recovery Console shows different drive letter than Windows

[S Claus]

Hi all

I just had a crazy problem that led to some data loss and wanted to
know what could cause this.

On my laptop I was running XP SP3. I had some problems with the
"Network connections" option not showing up in the Start menu, and
also some other things that seemed to have something to do with a
corrupt registry (I did not suspect a virus as I have a fully updated
anti-virus and like to think of myself as quite a safe computer user).

Then besides that there was also a problem with the CMOS battery being
about empty and the manufacturer (Clevo) giving me a run-around
because this was purchased from AJP in UK which no longer sells
laptops etc...

Anyway...another problem on this system was that, even though I was
able to boot into Windows, when I was working on fixing the perceived
registry problems I noticed two files on the root of the D: partition:
NTDETECT.COM and ntldr. Since my Windows was installed on C:
partition, I thought that these should not have been on the D:
partition.

Dumb me, I should have checked first whether they also are on C:, but
did not, and proceeded to move them from the root to a "check these
later" folder.

What happened next was that after a restart some time later I was no
longer able to boot into Windows. I kept getting the error message
about "missing ntldr".

I then tried fixing the issue through the recovery console. The
problem with this was that Recovery Console showed my Windows
partition as D: and my other partition as C:.

(My laptop has two partitions, C: and D: I had renamed my C: partition
as "LOCAL A" and my D: partition as "LOCAL B")

I managed to get NTDETECT.COM and ntldr replaced from a Win XP
installation CD, onto the the partition with the Windows installation
(displayed as C: in Windows but D: in recovery console). However this
did not help with the "missing ntldr" message.

[Now come to think about it, in my case I probably should have copied
them to the "wrong" partition instead of the Windows partition]

After attempting to fix the situation with
1. chkdsk (ran without errors but did not solve the problem),
2. bootcfg (all options failed), and
3. fixmbr (ran without errors but did not solve the problem)

....I then decided to reinstall Windows. I eventually got to the point
where the installation process displays the partitions on the hard
drive (according to the installation process I had no partitions with
installed Windows).

I then decided to delete the partition that I knew Windows had been
on, that is to say the one displayed as "Local A" (C and proceeded
further with the re-installation. However, after the installation was
finished I noticed that I had been left with two partitions that had a
Windows installation. The installation process had somehow deleted my
"Local B:" (D partition instead.


The question I wanted to ask is, what can cause a partition to show
with different labels / drive letters in Windows vs. Recovery Console
vs. the installation process?

Thanks in advance,

 

[DL]

I hope your data was backed up
http://michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html
Delete all partitions in the process, you may need to install sata controler
drivers via floppy using the F6 option early in the installation process

Hi all

I just had a crazy problem that led to some data loss and wanted to
know what could cause this.

On my laptop I was running XP SP3. I had some problems with the
"Network connections" option not showing up in the Start menu, and
also some other things that seemed to have something to do with a
corrupt registry (I did not suspect a virus as I have a fully updated
anti-virus and like to think of myself as quite a safe computer user).

Then besides that there was also a problem with the CMOS battery being
about empty and the manufacturer (Clevo) giving me a run-around
because this was purchased from AJP in UK which no longer sells
laptops etc...

Anyway...another problem on this system was that, even though I was
able to boot into Windows, when I was working on fixing the perceived
registry problems I noticed two files on the root of the D: partition:
NTDETECT.COM and ntldr. Since my Windows was installed on C:
partition, I thought that these should not have been on the D:
partition.

Dumb me, I should have checked first whether they also are on C:, but
did not, and proceeded to move them from the root to a "check these
later" folder.

What happened next was that after a restart some time later I was no
longer able to boot into Windows. I kept getting the error message
about "missing ntldr".

I then tried fixing the issue through the recovery console. The
problem with this was that Recovery Console showed my Windows
partition as D: and my other partition as C:.

(My laptop has two partitions, C: and D: I had renamed my C: partition
as "LOCAL A" and my D: partition as "LOCAL B")

I managed to get NTDETECT.COM and ntldr replaced from a Win XP
installation CD, onto the the partition with the Windows installation
(displayed as C: in Windows but D: in recovery console). However this
did not help with the "missing ntldr" message.

[Now come to think about it, in my case I probably should have copied
them to the "wrong" partition instead of the Windows partition]

After attempting to fix the situation with
1. chkdsk (ran without errors but did not solve the problem),
2. bootcfg (all options failed), and
3. fixmbr (ran without errors but did not solve the problem)

...I then decided to reinstall Windows. I eventually got to the point
where the installation process displays the partitions on the hard
drive (according to the installation process I had no partitions with
installed Windows).

I then decided to delete the partition that I knew Windows had been
on, that is to say the one displayed as "Local A" (C and proceeded
further with the re-installation. However, after the installation was
finished I noticed that I had been left with two partitions that had a
Windows installation. The installation process had somehow deleted my
"Local B:" (D partition instead.


The question I wanted to ask is, what can cause a partition to show
with different labels / drive letters in Windows vs. Recovery Console
vs. the installation process?

Thanks in advance,

 

[John John - MVP]

Hi all

I just had a crazy problem that led to some data loss and wanted to
know what could cause this.

On my laptop I was running XP SP3. I had some problems with the
"Network connections" option not showing up in the Start menu, and
also some other things that seemed to have something to do with a
corrupt registry (I did not suspect a virus as I have a fully updated
anti-virus and like to think of myself as quite a safe computer user).

Then besides that there was also a problem with the CMOS battery being
about empty and the manufacturer (Clevo) giving me a run-around
because this was purchased from AJP in UK which no longer sells
laptops etc...

Anyway...another problem on this system was that, even though I was
able to boot into Windows, when I was working on fixing the perceived
registry problems I noticed two files on the root of the D: partition:
NTDETECT.COM and ntldr. Since my Windows was installed on C:
partition, I thought that these should not have been on the D:
partition.

Dumb me, I should have checked first whether they also are on C:, but
did not, and proceeded to move them from the root to a "check these
later" folder.

What happened next was that after a restart some time later I was no
longer able to boot into Windows. I kept getting the error message
about "missing ntldr".

I then tried fixing the issue through the recovery console. The
problem with this was that Recovery Console showed my Windows
partition as D: and my other partition as C:.

(My laptop has two partitions, C: and D: I had renamed my C: partition
as "LOCAL A" and my D: partition as "LOCAL B")

I managed to get NTDETECT.COM and ntldr replaced from a Win XP
installation CD, onto the the partition with the Windows installation
(displayed as C: in Windows but D: in recovery console). However this
did not help with the "missing ntldr" message.

[Now come to think about it, in my case I probably should have copied
them to the "wrong" partition instead of the Windows partition]

After attempting to fix the situation with
1. chkdsk (ran without errors but did not solve the problem),
2. bootcfg (all options failed), and
3. fixmbr (ran without errors but did not solve the problem)

...I then decided to reinstall Windows. I eventually got to the point
where the installation process displays the partitions on the hard
drive (according to the installation process I had no partitions with
installed Windows).

I then decided to delete the partition that I knew Windows had been
on, that is to say the one displayed as "Local A" (C and proceeded
further with the re-installation. However, after the installation was
finished I noticed that I had been left with two partitions that had a
Windows installation. The installation process had somehow deleted my
"Local B:" (D partition instead.


The question I wanted to ask is, what can cause a partition to show
with different labels / drive letters in Windows vs. Recovery Console
vs. the installation process?

That is not all that unusual at all, your so-called D partition where
NTDETECT and ntldr were located is (was) the active partition. The
Recovery Console enumerates the disks and partitions using a
predetermined set of rules, it doesn't read the registry so it doesn't
respect or use the drive letters assigned by the Windows Mount Manager.
The Recovery Console's predetermined set of rules dictates that the
first enumerated active partition be assigned drive letter C and that is
what it did. Nothing out of the usual there. The same set of rules
apply to the Windows Setup program. All of the confusion came about by
not paying attention to which partition held the active flag.

You can easily test this by using a test disk with two primary
partitions and toggling the active flag from one partition to the other
and then booting with the Windows CD and launching the setup program and
seeing which partition is labeled as "C".

John