Boot sector corrupted

[Jwala]

My primary hard drive with Win me crashed with a registry and boot
sector error. I have two hard drives. How can I fix the Boot sector so
that I can move the data from the corrupted drive to the secondary
drive and trash the primary and switch to the secondary as my active
Partition. Currently when I boot winme from floppy it doesnt see any
drive at all other the A. But when I try to install Win2K on the
secondary hard drive, it can see all the drives but since the boot
sector on primary is toast its not able to install win2k properly and
gives a boot sector error or hardware error.

The options I am considering are:

1. To make the secondary partition as active and install win2k on it.
2. To switch hard drives and make the master as slave and slave as
master.

The summary of what I am trying to achieve here is to install win2k
and be able to see all drives and probably fix the corrupted drive
backup the data on cd's and reformat and clean up the whole system.

Can anyone please comment on my options or suggest how I can get
access to the data?

Thanks

 

[Joep]

How can I fix the Boot sector so


What file system?

Joep

 

[Bruce T. Berger]

Disconnect your corrupt drive while installing Win 2K.; then reconnect with
bootable Win 2K as primary & corrupt Win ME as secondary & drag your files
over.

btb

 

[Joep]

Disconnect your corrupt drive while installing Win 2K.; then reconnect with
bootable Win 2K as primary & corrupt Win ME as secondary & drag your files
over.

This may be a problem as OP states the boot sector is corrupt (although it
would be helpful to get the *exact* error message to learn if we're dealing
with the master boot record or a partition boot -record or -sector, the two
are often mixed up). Although the name *boot* sector may suggest that the
sector is only required for booting in reality it contains vital meta
information required for accessing the drive/partition.

Joep

 

[Zvi Netiv]

My primary hard drive with Win me crashed with a registry and boot
sector error. I have two hard drives. How can I fix the Boot sector so
that I can move the data from the corrupted drive to the secondary
drive and trash the primary and switch to the secondary as my active
Partition. Currently when I boot winme from floppy it doesnt see any
drive at all other the A. But when I try to install Win2K on the
secondary hard drive, it can see all the drives but since the boot
sector on primary is toast its not able to install win2k properly and
gives a boot sector error or hardware error.

The options I am considering are:

1. To make the secondary partition as active and install win2k on it.
2. To switch hard drives and make the master as slave and slave as
master.

The summary of what I am trying to achieve here is to install win2k
and be able to see all drives and probably fix the corrupted drive
backup the data on cd's and reformat and clean up the whole system.

Can anyone please comment on my options or suggest how I can get
access to the data?

We need more information to help you. To let you gather the required info, you
may download http://resq.co.il/download/resq.exe and prepare the RESQ floppy as
instructed in the program's welcome message.

Boot the computer with the floppy just prepared and when at the A: prompt, run
RESQDISK /ASSESS , leaving the floppy write enabled for storing the report.
Post here the report file (it's plain text) found in A:RESQDISK.RPT

Regards, Zvi

 

[Jwala]

All,

Thanks for your suggestions. I fixed the problem over the weekend. I
bought another hard drive as I wasnt prepared to format and loose the
date on either of my hard drives. Loaded up XP on the new drive and
hooked up the old primary as a slave to the new drive. It worked like
a charm. I am able to see all the files in the old drive. The old OS
was Win ME and FAT32 partition. I am wondering if the FAT32 had
anything to do with it?

I suggest this solution to anyone with a boot sector problem. As I
understand it having a boot sector problem doesnt mean you loose your
data on the drive.

Thanks