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How-To Geek Forums » Windows XP

Problem booting XP

(6 posts)
  • Started 1 month ago by WindowsSolaris
  • Latest reply from k9
  • Topic Viewed 131 times


WindowsSolaris
Posts: 4

Hello all,
Last night I deleted my Solaris partition and tried to load my remaining XP. I got "no operating system found" message.
I tried fixmbr with no arguments but it did nothing. I then tried to run fixmbr with argument multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) as the default was with partition(0) which was my solaris partition I guess.
After that I rebooted and got the same message. When trying to enter the recovery console I can't see my windows in the OS list and I only get c:> prompt.
Running dir returns "An error occurred during directory enumeration.
Running chkdsk returns "The volume appear to contain one or more unrecoverable problems".
What can I do now?

Thanks a lot.

Posted 1 month ago #
 
WindowsSolaris
Posts: 4

I'm running my system on an HP laptop with one physical drive.

Posted 1 month ago #
 
k9
k9
Posts: 104

Strange, fixmbr should have solved the problem. On entering the recovery console type "map" (w/o the quotes), what does it print?

I presume you deleted the Solaris partition from disk management in XP, right?

Posted 1 month ago #
 
WindowsSolaris
Posts: 4

map gives:
C: 18998 MB \Device\Harddisk0\partition1
D: \Device\CDRom0

The C: partition is my XP partition.
I deleted the Solaris partition using an XP installation bootable CD since my Solaris stopped working (prints a dump at the beginning of the loading) and also its liveCD stopped working (got stuck when trying to load the windowing system).
Thanks

Posted 1 month ago #
 
WindowsSolaris
Posts: 4

Some more clarifications:
My OS menu before deletion was Grub. I first installed XP and then Solaris. I deleted the Solaris partition using the XP bootable CD because Solaris stopped working (even its liveCD stuck when loading windowing system).
After the Solaris removal I tried to recover XP with fixmbr. Before running it I could see my XP partition in the recovery console (also could see WINDOWS directory and all my directories. I received Access Denied when trying to enter other directories), and in the XP installation
program. After running fixmbr on the XP partition I cannot see it in the recovery console (as I mentioned earlier) and from XP installation program I can see:
C: Partition1 [Unknown] 18999 MB < 18998 MB free >
That is also what map command returns from the recovery console (I can see C: with \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1 in the same line).
The only commands I ran is fixmbr (did nothing), fixboot and "fixmbr \Device\Harddisl0\Partition1" (one of the last two cause my files to disappear).

Thanks

Posted 1 month ago #
 
k9
k9
Posts: 104

OK, Your XP partition's partition table seems to be corrupted. The fact that "[Uknown]" is shown against C: indicates that the file system is not being recognized. NTFS or FAT32 should have been mentioned there and also it shows that the entire space is free (18999 MB) indicates that there is some problem with the partition table. Have a look at this page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk it might help solve the problem.

Posted 1 month ago #
 

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