Any Hope of Drive Recovery?

G

Guest

Hi, while troubleshooting a specific problem involving Adobe Flash Player v9,
I used REGEDIT to check the Security Permissions of HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT of my
hard drive. Interestingly, there were no groups/user names listed. I added
Administrators, CREATOR OWNER, and SYSTEM with full control while following
the troubleshooting instructions I had (from Adobe). After it didn't help
resolve the problem, I "deleted" the groups I added. After that, the hard
drive failed to respond to commands like shut down. I rebooted and it tries
to boot up, but hangs at the "Welcome to Windows XP" screen you see right
before you get the list of user accounts. I tried to use the Windows CD to
repair the Windows installation but it said it couldn't locate a previous
Windows installation.

I built a new hard drive and can use it to perform Computer Management.
Under Disk Management, I can "see" the damaged drive but it has no drive
letter/volume name. It shows Layout=Partition, Type=Basic, File System=NTFS,
Status=Healthy (Active). It is also Online, just like my new hard drive.
However, when I right-click on it, I don't get the Change Drive Letter or
path option...all I get is Convert to Dynamic Disk. Using DISKPART in a
command prompt window, I can't see any volume associated with the disk's
partition (it is 1 partition). DISKPART doesn't let me assign or create a
volume for basic disks, just dynamic disks (as far as I can tell).

I'm running Windows XP Pro w/SP-2 and all patches/updates as of Dec 22, 2006
were applied. If anyone has any suggestions on how I might be able to access
the drive to recover data from it, or fix/restore the registry on it, I'd be
grateful. I'll even buy a 3rd-party software if that'll get me access to the
damaged drive. (I've already run System Mechanic 6.0w's Drive Medic via
floppy disk against it - it says the MBR and File System are fine, so it
doesn't fix my access problem.) Thanks and Happy New Year! Jim D/West
Point, VA
 
G

Guest

Hi again, I used software called Partition Table Doctor from EASEUS.com to
rebuild the partition. I can access and save the files I want, but it'll
take a wipe/format to put new boot sector data on the drive to make it
bootable again. (The program has a FIXBOOT option but even though it
recognized I had an NTFS partition, it couldn't fix the boot sector. That
may have been due to my use of Norton GoBack on that drive.) So, I know what
my next several days will be spent doing...lots of programs to reload, lots
of data to copy to the new drive...Jim D/West Point, VA
 

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