Unhiding a partition in XP

some time ago, I used partion magic to hide a partition to make the rest of the system work properly.
Back then I had win2k, and when I installed winxp on another harddisk, I was unable to access the hidden partition (it calls it an unknown partition), and I had borrowed partition magic from a friend to do these things, so I dont have acces to it any more.
Is there any way to unhide/access hidden partitions in winxp, or are there any free programs that allow you to do so?

 

Try poping in your xp cd.
Format the partion that is hidden.
Abort installation.
Try to see if it has reapeared in your regular os.

 

The problem is not with my OS. Everything works fine, but I cant access the files on the hidden partition, which is what I need (the partition is on a seperate harddisk, and I was using it for backup, so it is a bit of a problem not being able to access the files)

 

Sepearte hardisk?
Try
Control panel>administartive tools>services
Rightclick logical disk management services and ensure they are automatic.

Is your second hardisk detected by the osr?

 

yes, windows has detected the harddisk, and it claims that it is a healthy FAT32 partition, but it also claims that it is an unknown partition, so even though I can see how big the partition is and how much space is free, I cant access any of the files on it, since windows wont let me assign a drive letter to it (and even if I could, windows probably would not be able to show me the files properly anyway as long as it is hidden)

 

http://www.partition-recovery.com/