Booting Problems

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by insamaic, Sep 5, 2006.

  1. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Hey Everyone.

    I recently was changing the size of 2/3 of my partitions on one hard drive. After doing so, when I tried to boot XP Home Edition, I got the Blue Screen Of Death. I tried restarting a few more times, without luck.

    Then I searched for bad sectors, and tried to repair them, it doesn't even get to the BSOD.

    I couldn't be bothered fixing it, so I want to reformatt, but I just want to get a few files of the partition. How would I go about transferring them to another partition?
     
  2. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Gah. I just used Acronis to look at my partitions to see if I could backup the XP Home Edition drive, but I don't think I can fit it on the hard drive.

    Another thing that suprised is, that now I only have 1 Partition.

    XP C:
    Unallocated Space

    Even though I should have something like:

    XP C:
    Backup D:
    Data E:

    Am I loosing all my data?! :'(
     
  3. erikske

    erikske Sergeant

    What exactly is the error in the BSOD?
    At first sight i would say you have deleted two partitions instead of resizing them.
     
  4. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Well, it doesn't go to the BSOD anymore. It says:

    "Press F1 to retry, F2 to continue setup". Or something similiar.

    I don't think I would have done that accidentally, because I've resized partitions hundreds of times before.
     
  5. erikske

    erikske Sergeant

    The error 'No boot device available strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility' is displayed when your computer is unable to find an operating system. Something must have gone wrong when resizing the partitions.
    If you have a Windows XP CD handy, get into the recovery console and use the fixmbr and fixboot commands to fix the HD's boot sector.
    If the above fails, you have to repartition and reformat your drive and reinstall windows.
    If still no luck, your hard drive may have died.
     
  6. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Ok, thanks, but is there anyway that I can get the files of my old partitions (Data and Backup). Cuz I had heaps of stuff on it...
     
  7. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    I fixed the MBR, but when I tried 'fixboot' it said:

    FIXBOOT cannot find the system drive, or the drive specified is not available.

    And it still says: "No boot device available strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility." When I try to restart.
     
  8. erikske

    erikske Sergeant

    You will have to reinstall windows then. Be sure to delete all partitions and completely reformat everything.
    To backup your data, you can use knoppix. Download the iso and burn to CD. Then boot your pc from it.
    The easiest way to backup is to use the qtparted tool included on the cd.
    First things first, check if you can access the old windows drive. If you can access it, there should be a shortcut on the knoppix desktop. Click it and see if the files get listed without errors. If you can access the drive, you can start making backups.
    Create a FAT32 partition large enough to contain your backups. Then mount the partition on the system and start copying the files from the windows partition to it. If mounting the partition is too difficult, reboot the pc again with knoppix in the drive and there should appear a shortcut to the new partition on the desktop.
    When done, shut down and begin to install windows. Be sure not to delete the backup partition!
    If the above fails, you can try to burn your backups to cd if you have 2 cd drives. Use k3b for that.
     
  9. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Uhh.. how would I go about trying to access my old XP?

    Does this backing up mean I can get all the partitions backed up?
     
  10. erikske

    erikske Sergeant

    If you are able to access your XP installation, that would be easier of course.
    The missing partitions are probably lost, you can try to restore them by hooking the drive up to another computer and running Active@ Undelete on it. You can backup files to this other computer then. This is easier than the knoppix solution, but requires you to have more than one computer.
    When done, completely erase all partitions from the disk and start clean. That is the only safe way to recover from a messed up partitioning.
     
  11. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    I just connected the hard drive to another computer before I read the reply. I'm installing Active@ Undelete now...

    I'm having a few problems with lagging issues, but it seems I am able to get back my XP Drive files, which is great. I'll post again with more updates.

    Thank you heaps for the help so far!
     
  12. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Active@ Undelete doesn't let me scan the "Unallocated Space", which contains my previous Data and Backup partitions. Is there another program I can use to recover from the unallocated space?
     
  13. insamaic

    insamaic Guest

    Nevermind, it's all working, I had to buy the program though.... Thank you so much mate! I'm in your debt.
     

MajorGeeks.Com Menu

Downloads All In One Tweaks \ Android \ Anti-Malware \ Anti-Virus \ Appearance \ Backup \ Browsers \ CD\DVD\Blu-Ray \ Covert Ops \ Drive Utilities \ Drivers \ Graphics \ Internet Tools \ Multimedia \ Networking \ Office Tools \ PC Games \ System Tools \ Mac/Apple/Ipad Downloads

Other News: Top Downloads \ News (Tech) \ Off Base (Other Websites News) \ Way Off Base (Offbeat Stories and Pics)

Social: Facebook \ YouTube \ Twitter \ Tumblr \ Pintrest \ RSS Feeds