Please, save my data!

Fox5

Veteran
Ok, I decided to install windows 2003, but I didn't have any partitioning tools and I didn't want to overwrite windows xp, so I installed it to a different folder. I'm not sure if that's what caused the problem though, as I also started an install of mandrake linux and played around with the partition a little bit to see if I could change it, but as far as I know I changed nothing with it, unless it changed something on its own.

Now I've gotten to a point where when booting up, some letters on the screen will just turn colors and the computer will freeze up.
And for some reason my harddrive is listed as a LRG on bootup.

I've tried using the windows repair console to delete the 2nd windows directory as well as fix the boot record. I even set the master boot record to only have the first windows installation in it, and I've tried reinstalling both windows 2003 and windows xp several times.

Anyway I can get it working again without formatting?
 
Jesus! Was a long time since I heard about someone do something as nutty as that... I think last time was when a guy I knew once told a friend of his had moved all the DLL files on his harddrive into a separate folder, all the vxd files into another, the exes into a third etc and then got surprised when his win install stopped working... :LOL:

Sorry, but you're scroowd. Take it like a man and reformat.

Hope ya learned something from this experience. ;)
 
I put my harddrive into a 2nd computer and I can access everything.
I deleted both windows installs, but it didn't fix anything.

BTW, Linux has an option to use the free space on my harddrive to install itself, but when I tried it it told me my harddrive was too fragmented to do so. I figure I'll just keep defragging until it likes it(went down to 14%, now it's down to 7%), try that, and then when that doesn't work just wait for my new 200GB harddrive so I can save my data, but I'll be without my main computer for a week.
 
I just recently got a 200Gb sATA just so I could organize/format my two 80Gb drives, I know where you're at. ;)

G'luck mate, at least you can still get the info from it. :)
 
Ok, I finally fixed it.
I had to get out the Maxblast software that came with my harddrive.
I did it's little set up thing.
It asked for a windows 98 boot up disk.
It formatted the harddrive as fat32 and wrote some files onto the harddrive.
I reformatted it as ntfs(in 4 partitions this time to make sure I don't have to lose all my data next time operating systems go awry), and everything's working just fine.
(formatting using windows xp just wouldn't work, not even the recovery console would fix it)


And I hope I backed up everything I wanted to keep. I burned a bunch of cds, but I wonder if I missed something.
 
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