Non-booting partitions - after partition table error fix

[doobydave]

Hiya. Here after a bit of help.

My system drive partition table recently got corrupted (either through trying to rebuild grub after server2003 took it out or maybe an xp pluggin to mount ext2 and ext3 filesystems). There was partition overlap and the 60 GB disk was reported to be 90ish GB.

Only discovered the problem when trying to install linux again - after failed grub rebuild.

Tried Partition Magic yet it was unable to fix the errors it was reporting. Then tried Partition Table Doctor. Had more joy, was able to fix it so that the erroneous partitions could be deleted.

The upshot is that the xp and 2003 installs in the extended partition will not boot even though boot.ini refers to the correct partition number. Xp in the primary works and my new linux install.....well thats a completely different story.

I have notice that there seems to be a lack of hidden/system files int the root directories of the two failing os's and was wondering what files should be there and if i can just go ahead and copy ones from my working xp in the primary partition.

*afterthought* XP on C: is FAT32 - I wonder if that is why it still lives?

Any help would be gratefully received. Thanx.

[jaclaz]

Needed files are listed here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=33030

And yes you can just copy them over, though I cannot say if the problem will be fixed with just that (I mean, from the report you made there is no way only these files could be deleted, it is possible that you still have some kind of partition corruption)

In case a similar occasion happens, do use TESTDISK:

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

it is VERY good for recovering partition info.

jaclaz

[doobydave]

Thanks for the reply.

Is boot.ini only required in C (primary part)? and the other two in all bootable partitions?

What about io.sys, config.sys and autoexec.bat?

Will checkout the TESTDISK link. I have seen enough of your posts in the past to know that if you say something is 'VERY' good then it will be well worth checking out.

Thanks again.

[nitroshift]

XP uses config.nt and autoexec.nt located in c:\windows\system32, not config.sys and autoexec.bat in c:\

[jaclaz]

NO, these files are only needed on the active partition (the one that normally is C:)

io.sys, config.sys and COMMAND.COM are the system files for DOS/Win9x/ME, unless you had a dual boot you won't need them.

autoexec.bat and config.sys are, as said, DOS/Win9x/ME files, and they are NOT needed for booting.

config.nt and autoexec.nt, are NT files, but they are as well not needed for booting.

Please note that if you have different versions of NT based systems, the NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM must be of the LATEST version you have (they are all backwards compatible, but usually NOT forward).

jaclaz