system wont boot, cant access files as slave drive. HELP!

My system has been buggy for awhile, and ive been too lazy to nuke it, then one fateful day, it froze on boot, i reset it and now it wont boot. When she went to boot it would get passed the windows loading screen and then a error box would pop up saying some exe file did something(cant remember) you hit okay and it would reboot and do it all over again. When i tried to reinstal windows, windows wanted to format the drive first, there was no option for a new instalation over the old one

So, fine i said. I got a new HD slapped it in as a master, put my old one in as a slave and installed windows on the new HD. When i went to go access my old drive windows says it needs to be formated before i can do that. Apparently somehow the ntsf file system on my old drive is now RAW file system and windows cant access it. Im trying to boot to it now but now it just sits at "verifying DMI pool data..." I know my files are still intact on there

I tried using a linux emulation on the new drive because i heard that OS can access RAW files but im really in the dark here and have no idea what to do. Can anything be done or am i going to need to bite the bullet and loose my 50gigs plus of data? Please help me

BTW it was xp sp2

Here is what I would do first.

I would remove the new HDD, boot the PC using the Windows CD-ROM and access the Recovery Console. In the Console, use the commands Map, and Fixboot X: (X: being whatever letter it sees as the HDD, most likely C Then remove the CD-Rom and Reboot.
Let us know if this helps.

okay so the first time i did it, it said it didnt reconize the file system, but it successfully wrote a new bootsector and apparently converted it to FAT system. Although when i went to boot it says NTLDR is missing, press any key to reboot. Happend when i did it again too. Im gonna try and see it its really FAT now and if i can use the new HD to access it again.

okay, think im royally boned here. Went to access my old drive as a slave. It says its FAT file system now but it shows it with a max capacity of 10mb on a 250gig drive. When i access the drive i see one folder and a few unknown files all with boxes for names, cant access or rename the folder on the drive because the syntax is incorrect, cant rename because cant read from source file or disc. Im suppose to have a whole copy of windows plus all my music, videos and pictures plus p0rn. JK but really all my crap should be there but its not. So am i boned?

Edit: If it matters the drive is partitioned, one is my main drive and the other is my ghost image. Recovery reconized them, when i access the drive i only have a 10mb F drive for the slave

Perhaps. But you are getting closer to knowing for sure. I am under the impression that you are booting from the new drive. I'd try to convert the old drive to NTFS. Command prompt syntax is: [SIZE=-1]convert [volume] /fs:ntfs [/v][/SIZE]

i had the old drive disconnected, ill try that. Is that a recovery console command?

recovery console wont accept the command

I don't believe so. There is a screenshot of the recovery console command list in that article I linked to earlier and I didn't see it in that screen. I think you have to do it from a command prompt inside a working install of XP. Unless you can copy the executable file from such an installation to an XP boot floppy set, for example. Or, the set might have it included. I have never created such a set, and know not. I usually just use an old 98 bootdisk with a select set of apps to wipe a drive when it gets to a bad point like yours is in.

alright, booted to the good drive again, ran command console, tried to convert my old drive (F) to ntfs. Didnt work due to errors on drive, used checkdsic and fixed those, and now i cant convert due to insufficent space. Still is only reading 10mb on a 250gig drive. Im thinking of loading partition magic and taking a look at the drive?

Ugh, sorry to hear that. That 10mb issue is probably a clue as to what is wrong with the drive. But I cannot figure out what it means.

You could try to use fixmbr on it from within the recovery console. Or set it all down or a day and get more suggestions, or spot-on "This is exactly what you do to fix it." answers from those smarter then I.

ill try that last command. Partition magic does not know what to make of it, all it says is BAD for file system so... its also showing about 30gigs of "BAD" while when i look at the drive its only 10mb. Ill let you know with that command.

okay well i did that and it said invalid partition parameters or something sinular, did fixboot again after that and says ntldr is missing again. So i dont know, ive seen nothing like this, whenever i try something it just snowballs worse. Im doubting if my information is still intact including my ghost image. Whats weird is i had 2 partitions and recovery console sees 3.

I have never tried any of them, but there seem to be plenty of free partition recovery softwares available on the other end of a google search.

As for the errors, ntldr missing doesn't surprise me, given the nature of the issue. The fact that fixboot and fixmbr both fail to help tells me that the problem does not lie in the bootsector of the drive, rather it is on the actual partition. It is not possible for me to know, but I am confident that our efforts did not make a bad problem worse, as they were not destructive in nature.

Another option, now that I think of it, would be to use UBCD4WIN and use the unstoppable copy or some of the other HDD tools contained on that CD. At any rate, keep me updated.

on partition magic? ive never used the program that much, just to make my ghost partition, ill need to look into it thanks so far for the help

anyone else? im prob bonned.

Dabba said:

on partition magic? ive never used the program that much, just to make my ghost partition, ill need to look into it thanks so far for the help

Click to expand...

I don't understand what you are saying here. Could you rephrase it?

what cd were you reffering to in your previous post?

Dabba said:

what cd were you reffering to in your previous post?

Click to expand...

Oooh, now I understand. I am refering to the Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows. Everybody NEEDS one of these. Start here. Takes a little effort to make, but it is worth 1000 times that. After making yours, boot with the CD and use the HDD tools on that troubled drive.... You'll likely whip it right back into shape. Hopefully, you can get your data back in the process.

i'd download a Live linux cd like Knoppix, http://www.knoppix.org/ and boot off that, then mount both of your drives using ntfs-3g (for write support) and hopefully that will let you copy off the old drive and place the info on the new drive.

ive tried knoppix, but i cant figure out how to navigate in it at all, i was on it for 45 min trying to access my HDDs but no success. does it matter that i mounted it on my new hdd which is the current master? does it need to be on an external drive? any help with that is appreciated being that is on my desktop and ready to run