As crazy as it sounds, that's what happened. I have single disk with 2 partitions:

First partition (20 gigs) was c:\ (FAT32) and this is where XP is installed

2nd partition (rest of the drive) was d:\ (NTFS)

I can see in the recovery console that they are switched now since it shows me that the only XP install is on d:\windows! How can I switch them back?

You need to change the active partition from 2nd back to first one. I'm not used to recovery console so I don't know how to do it through that but there are may other way to do it. Even booting in DOS. I'm sure someone will come up with the line you need to type in your recovery console.

How did that happen? Any ideas? That may help you work out what you need to do to fix it. I'm guessing that your PC won't boot at all, what error messages are you getting when you try to boot? Does it start at all or what?

It may be as simple as Ponch suggests or it could be such a whole world of pain that a backup of data and a clean reinstall may be the easiest answer.

Its probably worth trying the fixmft and fixboot commands from within recovery console. But to be on the safe side, personally I'd be backing up all important info first just in case something goes evily wrong!

UBCD4Win is probably the easiest way to backup data from a sick system, just follow the instructions on the site to build your CD and then either lash out on a new hard drive and copy across using UBCD4Win or buy a stack of DVDs and double check that UBCD4Win has a burner preinstalled (I'm sure it would but better check first!) You may even be able to fix your issue from within UBCD4Win too!

Another path maybe to try some HDD utilities like a partition manager. Although generally these tools are not available free, and probably not a good idea to spend cash on something that may or may not work. You could try something like Hiren's Boot CD but as its considered warez I won't be providing any links! I like it here too much!

to change the drive letters had changed you can

right click my computer > manage > disk management > right click drive and change drive letter

now if actual installations change drives lol... disregard that

It's been a year since I posted this and I have since solved the problem but I wanted to post the following in case someone else runs in to this. I did this before using gparted to move some partitions around (gparted is like partition magic except it is totally free). To keep WIndows happy if you need to move it's partition delete the following key BEFORE you attempt to do so:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Edited May 7, 200917 yr by graysky