Partition Disaster, windows xp hangs on splash screen...

Ok I have tried everything I can think of and searched for days now for any similar problems across countless boards and forums, and I am hoping someone on here may know something that will help...

Ok first of all my specs:
m2n sli deluxe MB
4G Corsair ddr 2
coolermaster psu
nVidia 9800gts
seagate 1tb SATA 100g partition with windows xp sp3 and 880g partition that is essentially empty
western digital 200g IDE not partitioned with windows xp sp2, fresh install last night
Sony IDE DVDRW
AMD Athlon 6400 dual core

Now for the issue...

Ok so i tried about 6 months ago to partition the d: drive on the TB hd from 880g to 2 400+g partitons using partition magic, but it forze up and after about an hour of nothing happening i rebooted and lost all the info on the original partition. I waited planning on getting another tb hd so i could try to recover the data, but i gave up waiting a few days ago needing space for some stuff, so i finally formatted the d: drive again. I decided this time not to use a 3rd party software and use a windows disk instead. As i tried my backup copies of xp they all had read errors and failed to boot to the partition screen of the setup, so i finally found an old copy of win2k that i had, not remembering that it used the fat32 file system still, and went ahead and split up the partition into 4 parts, i did not format them though.

Now C: has windows XP 100gig partition
d: was split using Win2K cd to boot to partition screen, but not formatted

I rebooted to see if it had worked, and windows detected only the original d: drive but with no size and unformatted

I finally found someone with a copy of a working Windows XP SP2 cd so i tried to boot from that disk:

At the partition screen it showed the c: and d: partition both being 100g and 2 more blank partitions(no drive letter), but i had split it up to 4 so i was missing one partition, I decided at that time to just delete the d: part and try over, so i selected part d: and selected delete, then it said please wait, and an hour later nothing had changed, so i just forced reboot...

Now I boot up fine, windows splash screen pops up and the bar at the bottom keeps moving like normal... then 10 mins go by and then 10 more and windows still did not load, the HD light staying lit up the whole time...

I tried to boot up with the windows disk again, and now it freezes before it can start, before i can even get to the recovery console option.

Next I tried to put in another drive on the ide cable i have, went to load it with windows, so i can at least access my files on the other drive, right, well no dice, it did the same thing freezing before it can start the install, cant even get to the console option...

now im clueless, so my next step was to remove the sata drive and try to install on the ide, which was successfull!

now i have windows booted up and i added the console to the startup options in case i needed it and the boot disk would not go that far...

Next i re-attached the sata drive and made sure of the new boot order in the bios, and i get to windows splash screen and guess what it gets stuck there again...

Tried next to boot into safe mode and it get stuck on mup.sys, lots of info about that error out there but nothing that fit my issue.

So then i try to boot into console off the startup menu and it acts like its going to load, the bar at the bottom fills all the way up and then it says please wait....

During all these attempts to boot with the sata drive simply attached to the system, it hangs before windows can load and the hd activity light stays lit and does not blink at all.

I have also now tried to use G-parted to boot but it gets stuck at the cursor before it asks to press a key to boot from cd, gparted boots just fine without the sata drive attached..


So now here i am hoping someone else will have an idea of how i can access that drive short of taking it to a shop...

 

With just the SATA drive connected you get to a Windows splash screen but it hangs.
With Gparted and the SATA drive connected you hang at a cursor.

Does your PC give you a boot order menu when hit F12 during post? If so with the SATA connected and trying to boot to the gparted CD try hitting F12 and manually selecting CD/DVDROM as the boot device. See if you get any further than the cursor.

 

You are a god!!!!!!!!!!!!

Booted right into g-parted fixed the extra partitions and formatted them and was able to save the c: partition and all the data that was on it...

For some reason though i had to use f8 to get into the boot order menu...

Ty so much you saved me from myself LOL

 

Glad you got things going.

Partitioning has gotten a lot easier but is still a great way to lose everything with just a few mouse clicks. At the risk of adding fuel to the fire you might take a look at Partition Wizard it seems to work very well with XP. [I'm still not sure about using third-party partition managers with Win7 and Vista for those I'd use Windows Disk Management.]

Interesting about F8 giving boot options, I wouldn't have thought that would be the key. Thanks for posting back with the resolution.