I've got some HUGE problems...

[__Camouflage__]

Alright, first things first. Im' ****ed if I can't get this fixed... I was on my girlfriends computer, and I was cleaning it up for her, so it wouldn't run like it does. While cleaning it up, I figured I would just backup all her photos to a DVD, well, that didn't work, so I decided to get Paragon Partition Manager 8.5 and just create a 15GB Partition and put her photos and other important documents on there. I bought the software, and all was going good, I have used this before, but I used 7.0 and not 8.5, looked a little more like Acronis, but worked well, for the most part. I had got the 15GB partition of the 60GB drive ready to be made, and I knew it was going to tell me that I had to reboot because there was only one partiton (C: drive), so I rebooted. Everything was going great, until the computer froze while creating the new partition. I knew I shouldn't have rebooted the computer, but I did anyway, 'cause there was no other choices. I did, and I continued to reboot the computer. When I did, it told me there was an error, and I needed to place the recovery disc in the drive and reboot. I don't have the Recovery disc from Paragon (Working on that now), so I placed the OEM disc for her laptop in the drive, it gave me the option to repair, but it was going to delete all information, which I don't want. I then got my Windows XP Professional disc, and began to repair the drive, but when I went to it, it said the drive was unpartitioned, which I know it has data on it. I also went into the recovery console and tried FIXBOOT and FIXMBR, which both of them said there was no Windows on the drive. Can ANYONE HELP ME AT ALL? I don't want to lose her pictures, because she is an amateur photographer and she loves her pictures. Thanks for all the help, Jeremiah!

 

[atomic tofu]

i think only EASY bet is to pull that drive out and use it as a slave in another system...that way you can see what's what on it, just in case one of your apps messed up the mbr

 

[peterhuang913]

another reason why backing up is so important

 

[eyeCpc]

By shrinking the primary you may have a paging file problem where there is no room quite yet for virtual memory. It sounds like you first need to get the primary size increased by using a different partitioning tool like GParted. That's free if you have a cd burner on another system to use and a blank cd-r.

One thing you can try right off is slaving the drive in another case and even using a live Linux distro like Knoppix or ubuntu to copy files into a temp folder on a larger drive. That will save the files from a partition that has become inaccessible. You would use that if Windows still can't see the files when slaved in another system. The other thing to try is using the manual method of starting the system restore feature found at How to start the System Restore tool at a command prompt in Windows XP

 

[Silverlord]

I would definatly take it as a slave drive, if indeed the partition was rebooted during the stage of making it, then your data will be lost to you.

 

[jasson]

If slaving doesn't work, Spinrite is very good data recovery software. I've had some good luck with it in the past.

 

[eyeCpc]

There are several freeware as well as retail recovery programs. First you want to rescue the files for safe keeping and then see if you can restore the current installation/partition.

 

[killians45]

Use FDISK and check the partition. I have the feeling you'll see it as unknown... if so, try a partition recovery program to save it.

 

[eyeCpc]

Know someone with a Linux live for cd distro like ubuntu? You simply boot from cd there and can see right onto the drive. GParted will list the partitions on the drives found as well as the types.

 

[networkgeek]

yeah sounds like it screwed up the partition table on that drive.

recovery software is your best bet, with the drive slaved to another machine