URGENT HELP! Post-Windows Install Keeps Deleting My Partitions

[datahead]

okay, so a while back i decided to reformat my pc again with windows xp, well i get to the screen where it asks you what drive you want to install it on, my primary IDE HDD, and it was partioned 3 times ( C:\Windows, D:\Games, E:\Applications ) well windows install decided to remove the partitions.. it actually said un allocated disk space. it is a 200GB HDD..

after all that BS i spent an entire day doing recovery on all the files i had lost.


now a few months later, my computer was in need of a good fresh install of windows vista. and the same damned thing happend to me, as we speak im searching and recovering deleted partitions....

i have no clue why this keeps happening, and its only when i use a windows install disk, and for some god forsaken reason decides to delete my partitions ( just on that one drive though )

i have 4 hard-drives

1. IDE: Maxtor - 200GB <--The one that windows likes to mess with
2. SATA: Maxtor - 150GB
3. SATA: Maxtor - 300GB
4. SATA: Western Digital - 500GB

i have a technicians boot cd, and i have run a bunch of different partition recovery software, and partition creation software, and it all works fine and dandy, untill i go to install windows...


please any help is greatly appreciated..

 

[djb]

how you had created the partitions ?
it seems like interference with the table of contence of the drive (TOC).
some partition manager softwares, create some partitions but this is only software creation. (It only shows partitions in windows, but there are not physically exists) , and are not accessible in dos.

so windows installation can't recognise your software partitions as 3 different partitions. windows installation reading the TOC which have only 1 partition created.

check those out and reply if there any news.

 

[datahead]

i actually used the mast blast software, i booted the cd that came with the drive, and created the partitions there... and if i even went into windows install, and tried creating the partitions there but it wouldn't let me... odd

but i was ble to pop in my bootable Active@ cd and create 1 partition on there and was able to install windows for some weird reason that worked.... but it only allowed me to create 1 partition so i have about 180GB of unallocated space and a 20GB partition

at first i thought maybe there was a virus hidden in the MBR, but im not sure how to check that out.