cannot boot after re-partition and format a harddisk

[John Smith]

One of the computers I own has two harddisks, one being
partitioned into 3 logical drives (C, E, F), the other two (D, G).
The second disk is a slave disk (first one master). I typically
boot from D (slave).

The first disk developed some bad sectors. I used spfdisk to
re-partition the drive and MHDD reformat it. Now, when I turn on
the computer, it says cannot find OS.

Can a boot manager solve the problem? If it can, is there a boot
manager that comes as a bootable CD image? I don't have a floppy
drive on this computer. Another solution I can think of is a
bootable DOS on a CD that recognize two CD drives for this
computer has two CD drives and I have spfdisk on a non-bootable
CD. The third solution would be to create a bootable CD with
spfdisk on it but I don't know how. Thanks.

 

[peter]

When you originally installed XP onto your slave drive it created the boot
sector(master boot record) on the C drive.........by formatting you have
destroyed that.By starting with your XP CD you should be able to enter the
Recovery Console to fix this problem.Here is the MS site that explains the
use of the Console.You do not need to install it you can run it off the CD
...you are loking to use the "fixboot" "fixmbr" commands
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654
peter

 

[Bill Blanton]

One of the computers I own has two harddisks, one being
partitioned into 3 logical drives (C, E, F), the other two (D, G).
The second disk is a slave disk (first one master). I typically
boot from D (slave).

Which drive is designated as the boot drive by the BIOS setup?
The primary master or slave? Loading Windows from "D:" is not
necessarily the same as booting from from "D:"

The first disk developed some bad sectors. I used spfdisk to
re-partition the drive and MHDD reformat it. Now, when I turn on
the computer, it says cannot find OS.

Best guess is that you were "booting" from a partition on the master,
which in turn was loading Windows on the slave (D: drive). If that's
the case you need a "primary active" partition on the primary master
(boot) drive, with the necessary boot sector code (to find ntldr), as well
as the necessary boot files (ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini).

Can a boot manager solve the problem? If it can, is there a boot
manager that comes as a bootable CD image? I don't have a floppy
drive on this computer. Another solution I can think of is a
bootable DOS on a CD that recognize two CD drives for this
computer has two CD drives and I have spfdisk on a non-bootable
CD. The third solution would be to create a bootable CD with
spfdisk on it but I don't know how.

A boot manager probably won't help, and will make things more
complicated.

Create an XP bootable CD. Point boot.ini to the partition on the
secondary drive. You can Google on how to do that. That should at least
get you in until it's straightened out.

 

[DL]

IMO if a hd develops bad sectors its time to dump it, immediately.

It may be that your boot record is on C and in partitioning it you lost the
boot record

 

[John Smith]

I loaded the XP CD and ran the recovery program. It asked me for
the administrator's password. I entered the password but it did
not accept the password. So I removed the defected harddisk,
installed a new harddisk and installed another copy of XP on the
new disk. I then ran fixboot (no problem) and fixmbr (it warned me
there is something wrong and said it might destroy the partition.
So I quitted.)

Now, is it possible to boot to the old XP? How?