F
Formosa
Hi y'all,
I hope this is the right forum for this question. I asked in
but to no avail.
When I attempt to bootup, my pc gives the error message "Invalid Partition
Table". I caused this by foolishly using the FIXMBR tool in the XP Pro
disk's Recovery Console in a situation when it wasn't necessary.
(Details of that now defunct problem in this thread:
)
After running it, now when I boot up, the computer just hangs with an
"Invalid Partition Table" error. Thus, my C: is inaccessible. I can still
access the D: via the command prompt on Recovery Console though.
When I ran FIXMBR, it gave a message warning that I had an invalid or
non-standard partition table, and prompted whether I wanted to continue. I
then did continue, as I wrongly believed that as my system is not configured
in a particularly "exotic" way, that the default MBR would be fine. My
googling since has suggested this sometimes happens when you run FIXMBR on a
system with 2 partitions.
My setup:
40G HDD.
primary partion - C: - 10G - XP Pro - NTFS
extended partition - D: - 30G - XP Pro - NTFS
Now I don't know if this is relevant or not, but when those partitions were
originally created it was done via the Fdisk command on a W98 Startup disk.
And I have read that there is a minor difference in the way Win9x creates
the MBR compared to XP.
ie. "Fdisk /mbr" is apparently very similar but not identical to "fixmbr".
Could this be the cause of the problem?
Would using "fdisk /mbr" from a W98 startup disk fix the problem?
Are there any tools that allow me to view the contents of the MBR? (I have
read that if the signature "55 AA" is missing, this can cause this error
message...)
Anyone recommened a good data recovery utility? (i'm assuming anything that
works won't be free, but cheaper the better
Thanks in advance,
Formosa
I hope this is the right forum for this question. I asked in
but to no avail.
When I attempt to bootup, my pc gives the error message "Invalid Partition
Table". I caused this by foolishly using the FIXMBR tool in the XP Pro
disk's Recovery Console in a situation when it wasn't necessary.
(Details of that now defunct problem in this thread:
)
After running it, now when I boot up, the computer just hangs with an
"Invalid Partition Table" error. Thus, my C: is inaccessible. I can still
access the D: via the command prompt on Recovery Console though.
When I ran FIXMBR, it gave a message warning that I had an invalid or
non-standard partition table, and prompted whether I wanted to continue. I
then did continue, as I wrongly believed that as my system is not configured
in a particularly "exotic" way, that the default MBR would be fine. My
googling since has suggested this sometimes happens when you run FIXMBR on a
system with 2 partitions.
My setup:
40G HDD.
primary partion - C: - 10G - XP Pro - NTFS
extended partition - D: - 30G - XP Pro - NTFS
Now I don't know if this is relevant or not, but when those partitions were
originally created it was done via the Fdisk command on a W98 Startup disk.
And I have read that there is a minor difference in the way Win9x creates
the MBR compared to XP.
ie. "Fdisk /mbr" is apparently very similar but not identical to "fixmbr".
Could this be the cause of the problem?
Would using "fdisk /mbr" from a W98 startup disk fix the problem?
Are there any tools that allow me to view the contents of the MBR? (I have
read that if the signature "55 AA" is missing, this can cause this error
message...)
Anyone recommened a good data recovery utility? (i'm assuming anything that
works won't be free, but cheaper the better
Thanks in advance,
Formosa