XP will not load, drive letters changed

[GTT]

Everything seemed fine and no problems detected when I shut off
yesterday. Tried to boot today and I get a blank grey screen. I have
win 98 and xp os dual setup. Win98 boots okay and when I view the
drives with explorer the drive letters now are reversed and I see some
folders not previously there. Config.Msi, Found.000, & Found.001.
Recycler and system Volume Information.
The day before I shut down I had installed the latest version of
Firefox, then uninstalled it and reinstalled the older version, not
sure why this could have done anything but trying to give all info.

Setup was as follows:
Drive 1 partitioned as C & D

C was set up with win 98se
D was set up with XP and had all program files plus documents and
settings

Drive 2 partitioned as E and had Photos music and video files.

When I look at the setup with explorer it now shows that D has my
music and video files and E is labeled as XP System and has the files
originally on D

I assume that the files physically are on the original partitions but
something is screwed up.


I think that I can copy files between the drives ok also I have backed
up data that I wish to save.

I would very much like try to fix this without formating as I have a
lot of programs to reinstall.

Any suggestions.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Everything seemed fine and no problems detected when I shut off
yesterday. Tried to boot today and I get a blank grey screen. I have
win 98 and xp os dual setup. Win98 boots okay and when I view the
drives with explorer the drive letters now are reversed and I see some
folders not previously there. Config.Msi, Found.000, & Found.001.
Recycler and system Volume Information.

Download the drive utility from the manufacturer's (of the hard drive) web
page to test the drive.
Found.000 and Found.001 means a CHKDSK found bad things.

If you have an imaging utility (Ghost, TrueImage, etc) - I suggest backing
your whole drive to an external location immediately. You can then access
any intact data through the cloning softwware's image file explorer
application.

 

[plop]

Everything you're describing sounds normal...
In fact-- identical to my setup.
(dual boot ME/XP)
98 views the drive letters differently. From my c: my cdrom is d:
from xp/d: it's E:
All the files/folders you can see now are normally hidden in xp. since the
system is offline you can see them...
Found.000, & Found.001 are recovered fragments and only 2 (0 and 1) were the
first and not much to worry about.
Looks like you are using third party partition manager/boot according to
your drive letters (xp keeps the D: as cdrom by default)
That's where you should look...
If you are using xp boot menu, check the contents of 'boot.ini' file on c:

Your boot sector and MBR must be ok. otherwise 98 wouldn't boot.
XP is the one that starts the system, not 98... unless it;s your third part
boot menu...

If xp does not boot, did you try safe mode?
Last known confgs?

 

[GTT]

Thanks guys for the input.

Opened in safe mode and then closed and opened again, and everything
was back to normal. Have no idea what caused it.

By the way when I boot in 98se all of my drive letters C,D,E F & G are
the same as in XP.Those files which are hidden files normally do not
show up under 98. I set all my drive letters using Partion Magic maybe
thats the difference. The boot.ini is vanilla Windows.

My next step is to see what kind of mirror program I should use to
copy my D (XP system) partition in case something is going to happen.
This may be my first and only warning.

 

[Kelly]

Great and glad all is well. Thanks for the feedback. )

--

All the Best,
Kelly (MS-MVP)

Troubleshooting Windows XP
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com