Need to restore XP Pro MBR & NTFS partition

[VISTA98]

a couple of months ago I installed Nokia Suite (mobile phone manager software by Nokia) on my XP Pro PC, and a week after that I got a boot error that XP Pro cannot find a file I think it was NTFS.SYS (or SYSTEM or VXD) but I think this is the one -- bad memory sorry.

Any way. The last app installed was that Nokia Suite which I think is the culprit. I think it did some thing to damage my MBR, but on the first partition only; the other partitions seem to be fine.

Partition 0: WIN XP NTFS (about 100 MB) <<--damaged boot

Partition 1: WIN 98 FAT32 OK

Partition 2: Nothing NTFS OK

Partition 3: My files OK

Partition 4: ((unallocated space since the built in XP Pro utility didn't allow me to do a 5th nor re-allocate space)) OK

The HDD is Maxtor 250 MB SATA

how can I restore the main XP partition and make it boot with out reformating -- I am pretty sure the files aren't damaged it is just the boot record/NTFS thing that got corrupted.

what is the recommended course of action here? is the Max Blast utility of any use? (already installed on the damaged partition)

Edited May 1, 2007 by VISTA98

[jaclaz]

VISTA98,

from what you write, I wouldn't be so sure it is a bootrecord problem, it looks more like a file corrupted.

However, to restore the COPY of the boot record read this:

http://forum.winimage.com/viewtopic.php?t=200

and given links therein

For a more general "in situ" repair, this:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

DO NOT use the MaxBlast utility.

jaclaz

[Ponch]

I am pretty sure the files aren't damaged it is just the boot record/NTFS thing that got corrupted.

...

is the Max Blast utility of any use? (already installed on the damaged partition)

You're not very clear ("pretty sure") if the partition is damaged (and all files are unavailable) or if it's just a few systel files that have been changed.

If it's just a booting problem, try the recovery from an XP cd.

If the whole partition has disapeared, try Testdisk.

If the partition is "damaged", explain what you mean by "damaged".

[VISTA98]

hmm... now my last reply, in which I explain that, is not showing here.. ?

[moo2004]

Vista98,

(Interesting name...)

Can you post the error message that you receive when you try to start your PC?

It will be much easier to know what cause the problem if we can see the error message

[kelaniz]

The most common problem I've seen with corrupted/damaged partitions occurring in WinXP is simply a screwed up partition ID. Running a modified or bad install, using alpha/poorly written software that causes Windows to crash and reboot (without a blue screen) usually precipitates it. Windows seems fine until you reboot. Then you see you have a problem.

You can use any recovery utility that lets you edit the partition ID. NTFS's ID is 07 (technically, 0x07) When you scan the partition with your app of choice, make sure that partition ID matches. Last time it happened to me, my install and data were all fine, but the partition ID had been changed to 52, which is not a valid filesystem ID. Change it back, and it works like a champ.

If that doesn't work, your corruption may extend to the entire MBR or FAT. Then it gets a little more complicated to fix.

Kel

[jaclaz]

Last time it happened to me, my install and data were all fine, but the partition ID had been changed to 52, which is not a valid filesystem ID.

FYI, and for the record, 52 is valid as well, but it is ususally a CP/M one:

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

52 CP/M

52 Microport SysV/AT

Are you sure it was 52 and not 42?

besides being the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything , 42 is a valid partition identifier, but it belongs to "Dynamic Disks" :

42 Windows 2000 dynamic extended partition marker

If a partition table entry of type 0x42 is present in the legacy partition table, then W2K ignores the legacy partition table and uses a proprietary partition table and a proprietary partitioning scheme (LDM or DDM). As the Microsoft KnowledgeBase writes: Pure dynamic disks (those not containing any hard-linked partitions) have only a single partition table entry (type 42) to define the entire disk. Dynamic disks store their volume configuration in a database located in a 1-MB private region at the end of each dynamic disk.

I have seen systems on which (reportedly by "black magic", but most probably by a failed attempt at fiddling with Dynamic Disks), the partition type has been changed to 42.

jaclaz

[phoenix1821]

hi there, if you try the fixboot utility from the WinXP cd so the first step when you are in the installation process press R this will open the system recovery console when this is open try the fixboot (which you type as i have here) and that will ask which partition and select the one and then that will write a new boot file for you, see if that works

Phoenix

Edited May 9, 2007 by phoenix1821

[kelaniz]

Last time it happened to me, my install and data were all fine, but the partition ID had been changed to 52, which is not a valid filesystem ID.

FYI, and for the record, 52 is valid as well, but it is ususally a CP/M one:

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html

52 CP/M

52 Microport SysV/AT

Ah, thanks for the correction! The text list I use is pretty old. When I last checked, 52 wasn't listed in either. But then again, it wasn't in Paragon Partition Manager, so I don't feel so bad.

Are you sure it was 52 and not 42?

besides being the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything , 42 is a valid partition identifier, but it belongs to "Dynamic Disks" :

I have seen systems on which (reportedly by "black magic", but most probably by a failed attempt at fiddling with Dynamic Disks), the partition type has been changed to 42.

jaclaz

Hehe. Yay for 42! On this box, though. It was definitely 52. After similar crashes, I've seen partition IDs become: 52, 97, 00, 06, 69, ?1, even high ASCII characters . Never seen a 42 though. If my disk ever did that, I think I'd take it as a sign, and do a quick world-news check for recent apocalyptic signs

95% of the time I've dealt with this, the system didn't use dynamic disks. A few times, the system wasn't even running Windows. Still, it does seem to happen more frequently on Winboxes.

The problem seems to appear when a disk-intensive application (Azureus downloading a 4GB linux distro) malfunctions and takes down the OS with it, leaving the entire box unresponsive, but not completely crashed. It's either due to that app's dying gasps, or that second of chaos (after you stop cursing) when you finally pull the plug, the boot sector, partition ID, and usually the backups get corrupted in some way.

I can see it happening like this. An app is happily writing huge chunks of data to disk when it partially crashes abut completely takes down the OS. Parts of that app are still running in limbo, as the OS support has been essentially pulled out from under it. In that Azureus case, the user saw the network connections remained open and it was still writing data to disk, so she left it alone for an hour to finish. I'd imagine that with both the app and the OS now unstable, OS-based disk write protection might not work so well, if it worked at all.

Now, I don't know if the above is even remotely close to what actually happens, or if it's even the cause. But in most of the cases I've dealt with, users with the invalid partition ID reported similar scenarios so darn frequently, I started to notice the pattern.

Kel

[jaclaz]

As a general advice to all, a good idea is to ALWAYS, ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS make a backup of MBR and (possibly) bootrecords of all partitions.

A very simple GUI utility for this, apart MBRFIX/MBRWIZARD, is Dimio's HDHACKER:

http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

A MBR or bootrecord will take 512 bytes of disk space on a NTFS partition and as much as 64 Kbytes on a HUGE FAT16 partition, you can even zip them together, don't come to me saying you cannot afford the disk space or the no-more-than-five-minutes needed to perform this simple preventive step....

...and you will thank me for this, should disaster happen!

jaclaz

[kelaniz]

jaclaz: Thanks for the HDhacker link. I've been searching forever for a utility like this that wasn't part of a 500MB suite.

Kel