MBR Mismatch

Hi,
I have a HCL Me laptop with Windows XP. Recently the same was infected with "Thinkpoint" virus. Since the "Shut down" was not working, I made hard tun off, by pressing the power button, quite a few times.

Later I managed to get rid of that. Then, the lap top was working fine. I was able to boot & shut down with out any issue. All of a sudden, I just faced an error saying that "MBR mismatching. Press any key to boot from CD".

When Checked with many forum, it was said, boot using XP CD, and user recover console for fixmbr. But When I try to load from XP CD, I was not getting a recovery console at all.
So, I made up my mind and installed XP. But to my shock, there was no data in any partition. (I had 4 partition).
But when I started booting, I am getting both old OS & New OS. Both are booting. TO my surprise, in old OS, Still MS Office, Win zip, Win amp & Acrobat are working fine. But all those files, which I had in desk top are also lost.

Friends, I would really appreciate, if you can help me in recovering my data. FYI, I have not made any formating, during OS installation.

 

Hi,

I think your MBR has been fixed by the new install. So it is a matter of finding your files.

I would boot into the original copy of Windows. Then go to Control Panel>Folder Options>View tab and Check the circle for "Show Hidden Files" and a couple options down uncheck the box for "Hide protected System files". Also uncheck the box for "Hide extensions for Known filetypes". Then go to C: folder and open boot.ini and copy and paste in your next post here. [This will tell how you installed the second copy of Windows] Once completed you can go back and Hide hidden files and also hide the "protected System files" (I would leave extensions showing but that is up to you)

Then you might also try getting a copy of SpaceSniffer and unzipping it and running it on the C: partition to see if you can find any of your missing files. If found, take note of which folder they are located in and see if you get to them through My Computer.

****
Just as a side note you said you had four partitions. Are the non-windows OS ones showing as containing files?

 

Hi Such,
Thanks a lot for the guidance. Unfortunately, I will be able to check the details on Wednesday only. I will let U know the details.

I have only XP Os that system. BTW, Boot.ini is showing up two XP installation one is the older one, as Windows and other the new one windows.0

I have set old one as default. How ever I will post the exact lines later.

Hv a nice week end.

 

HI Such,
I am back now. Please find the boot.ini file
***************************************************
[boot loader]
timeout=5
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS.0="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
**********************************************************

FYI, I ran the spacesniffer across all drives and could find nothing.