Hard Disk Anomaly - Partition Type Changed

[Filthy McNasty]

A friend reports that he was unable to boot this AM. On checking with
Partition Magic it reported his partition as being FAT12 rather than NTFS.
Is there a disk editor/utility that will allow him to fix this, if only
long enough to transfer his data somewhere safe, and if so what should he
alter in the boot sector to change from FAT12 to NTFS?

I think he may have a copy of Acronis Director, but any suggestions welcome

Thanks

 

[Mistoffolees]

A friend reports that he was unable to boot this AM. On checking with
Partition Magic it reported his partition as being FAT12 rather than NTFS.
Is there a disk editor/utility that will allow him to fix this, if only
long enough to transfer his data somewhere safe, and if so what should he
alter in the boot sector to change from FAT12 to NTFS?

I think he may have a copy of Acronis Director, but any suggestions welcome

Thanks

This is a dangerous indication. The hard drive has crashed or it is
no longer being properly identified by the computer. The first thing
to do would be to determine just what is the computer seeing. Verify
through bios setup that the hard drive is being autodetected and that
is also being identified properly; FAT12 is indicative for a floppy
diskette. If the bios setup is correct and the drive does not boot,
then it has crashed. Best to seek professional assistance if the data
is important. And, BTW, where is the backup for the data?

 

[Filthy McNasty]

Using at least one appendage, the entity known in this space-time

This is a dangerous indication. The hard drive has crashed or it is
no longer being properly identified by the computer. The first thing
to do would be to determine just what is the computer seeing. Verify
through bios setup that the hard drive is being autodetected and that
is also being identified properly; FAT12 is indicative for a floppy
diskette. If the bios setup is correct and the drive does not boot,
then it has crashed. Best to seek professional assistance if the data
is important. And, BTW, where is the backup for the data?

He misinformed me. FAT16 is what shows. He is currently getting an
Acronis Disk Director/True Image ISO burned to give him some chance of
at least copying what is there to a safe location. As for your BTW.
Ummm. Don't go there

If it does come to a boot sector edit I would expect Disk Director
capable of altering the partition type. I have strongly urged him not to
attempt anything before backing up what he still has

This followed some sort of possible malware attack. Mysterious
ineradicable pop-ups. Responsible files locked, in use, so undeletable.
Then on reboot differently named files. It is I suppose possible that
the symptoms were related to the last gasps of a dying HD, but that is
academic at the moment. I'm waiting for his Time Zone to wake up before
I'll know more

Thanks for the reply