XP Boot Problem

[Randy Broman]

I installed WinXP on a system with 2x160GB disks in a
stripe array (Promise motherboard RAID chip). The array
is thus ~320 GB - in the install NT set up a small FAT
partition (C, installed XP on a 150 GB NTFS partition (D,
and an empty 150 GB NTFS partition (E. I then tried
to combine the first two partitions ("drives") with
Partition Magic, and now the system won't boot. Questions:

1) Apparently the small C: partition is important. What
do I need to restore and how do I restore it? I tried booting
off the XP CD, but it does *not* present me with the Windows
setup screen with the Repair option.

2) Is there some emergency repair disk I can downlopad
and use?

3) If I can't combine C: and D:, can I combine D: and E:?
In other words, can windows handle a ~300 GB disk:

Thanx!

 

[Croaker]

You probly pooched the MBR when you combined the drives. Put in the XP
cd and boot to it choosing recovery console. There are three commands
we can use to attempt to rebuild the MBR.
"FIXMBR" repairs the master boot record, try this one first.
"BOOTCFG" configures the actual boot.ini
a new partition boot sector
heres MS's recovery console overview, read it first
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs
/en-us/recovery_run_console.mspx