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Win XP boot problem - bad partition

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Win XP Pro won't boot - repartition prob
Toshiba Satellite 1905-S303 (Win XP Pro, P4 2.4 GHz, 40Gig HD, 512 DDR, etc.)

My OS won't load because I believe that my hard disk partition is corrupt. Here's what was going on:

I was defraging my HD and had to pause and then stop the process. When I rebooted, I received windows boot errors and ended up having to reinstall windows. Because I don't have a recent backup, i wanted to recover data before reinstalling a clean install of XP. So, I installed XP over my current (corrupt) copy and was able to boot fine. Then I used PartitionMagic 8 to create a new partition in my free space (roughly 10 Gigs). Of course, you have to reboot the system for the changes to be applied, so I did. Then the system did part of the changes and rebooted again and then hung. I received the error:

A problem has been dtected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage...run CHKDSK /F and restart...tech. info: STOP: 0x00000024...etc.

I ran CHKDSK from the recovery console (not with /F, wouldn't work) and it said there were some errors. now i can only get back to the blue screen with the above error.

WHAT CAN I DO TO RECOVER ALL THE DATA?

5 replies

by dmiles

Their is the TechRepublic article 200 ways to save a hard drive
Check Partition magic for a utilty to recover data

Using a third party software may be of help,check the following sites for free utility
1)http://homearcor.de/christian_grau/rescue

by peter johnstone

Hi,
I have had exactly the same problem a couple of months ago on a laptop although it is a different make. I was convinced that all the symptoms indicated a faulty HDD, which I replaced, only to find the same thing happened again three weeks later. Eventually I traced the fault to one of the two memory modules fitted. For what it's worth I found which one was causing the problem by removing one at a time, of course I picked the wrong one first and had to go through the reinstallation ofXP yet again. A bit easier for me as we have all our machines imaged, and it is just a case of reloading the image complete with OS and applications from CD or DVD. It would be worth a try if your machine has two modules to remove one, try to bootand if still no go swap the one that?s in for the one removed, you will have to make sure that you occupy Slot 1. The unsuccessful repartitioning may well compound your problem, but it is worth a try. Incidentally the faulty module shows no faultson any of the diagnostic programs that we have, presumably because it is an intermittent fault and is therefore very difficult to reproduce.

If this fails you might like to try:
1. Run Partition Magic again to establish what state your drive is in. Is it still 1 partition or two?
2. Reinstall XP over the top of what is left of the original installation.
It really is a case of how desperate you are to recover the data; it may be that you want to consider a professional data recovery service.

Wishing you luck,
Peter Johnstone

by admin

i was pretty sure it was the HDD because of when and how everything occured. Since the HDD wouldn't boot I couldn't run Partition Magic or reinstall XP. I ended up using a program from Winternal's Administrator's Pak called Remote Recovery. It worked. I was able to use a second computer to create a Winternal's boot disk that allowed me to mount the HDD of the laptop onto the second computer. Then I was able to use Partition Magic and CHKDSK to repair the drive so that I could bootfrom the HDD. Now, I'm backing up all the data and will reload Windows. Thanks for your post...

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