Over the weekend I decided I'd quite like to try out Linux, as I'm getting more and more disgruntled with windows.
I decided to go the dual boot route and went about repartitioning my primary hard drive using partition magic. The drive had 3 partitions there already and I wanted to add a 4th, so I followed partition magic's wizard for creating a Linux partition. I set it off and it chugged away, moving data etc.. and eventually had to leave it overnight.
Sunday morning I wakes up and the pc says, please restart. I restart and as soon ast the boot gets to the windows loader I get the blue screen of death! Argghhh....
The partition magic recovery disks don't offer out anything. So I make a set of XP startup disks on my bro's pc, go to the recovery console and it looks like there is no boot info there. I even get an error trying C:/DIR. So I'm pretty stuffed!?
Luckily I found a spare HDD, and installed Linux on there, which is very nice by the way!
So what can I do about this then?? I've got shed loads of stuff on there and don't really want to loose it! Can I do anything with the XP install disk?

Sounds like you haven't activated a primary partition to me - without it being activated it wouldn't pick up on the c:/dir. I haven't used partition magic yet so can't really help at the moment but will be doing in my course in the next few weeks. I know that not much help at this point but I sure we must have some people on here who have used it.

Hope you get sorted.

We need more info.

What does the BSOD say? It will return an error code and message you can look up on the Micrsosoft Knowledgebase / Google.

What happens when you type DIR as the recovery console?

You may not need Partition Magic to activate a primary partition, but the problem may be more serious than that.

I know very little about linux, but recovering non-booting hard disks isn't rocket science, provided that the data is still intact and readable.

If you used parition magic without FULLY defragging & scandisking your hard drive first, then it may be gone.

Try attaching your hard drive to a friends PC & browsing from their windows installation, see if you can still read it. If you can, copy all your stuff over & flatten your hard drive.

Re-partitioning your hard drive is never a good idea on the fly, despite what the marketing bumpf from Partition Magic et al say. If you want a dual boot with Linux, install windows first on a smallish partition, make another NTFS partition for all your files, then let Anaconda (linux installer) do what it wants with the rest, & it should go seamlessly. You should then, from in Linux, see your windows partitions in the /mnt directory.

At least that's what happens (automatically) with my distribution...

Eeh thanks,
The problem is I've about 100Gb of stuff on there, mostly audio projects!

I've just downloaded Knoppix, a cd bootable Linux, it lets you browse your ntfs disks and lets you burn to cd/dvd - I might be in for a long burning session.

Thanks

Ah, the old tech support question (usually asked posthumously)

"You did backup your files BEFORE you [insert windows killing method here] didn't you?" :heyhey:

Backup? Nah, did I ekkers! I'm a bit of a horder!

Ok, I tried the win XP install disk and went to the repair console. It didn't even recognise I had an installation of XP on the c: drive! It only found a really old install of NT on an old hard drive I put in.

I'm running Knoppix at this very moment (hmm, a full operating system you don't even have to install!?!! if I didn't know better I would have thought I was on a mac!). All my drives and partitions have mounted nicely on the desktop and the C: drive is there too (intact!).

I'd really like to just copy the most important files over to another drive, but I'm a bit reluctant to as I've heard that writing files with ntfs using linux can be fatal.
Think I'll see if I can copy some of my most impoertant stuff to DVD, it's pretty much just web and graphics stuff on the C drive.

...Here goes!!..

Get hold of a version of fdisk and see what it reports

heyup,

I've just installed xp on another free partition, and now it reports the c: drive is empty! The other partitions on that drive are normal, just the C: is chuff'd. But Linux reckons there's stuff on there!

I ran fdisk and it reckoned the c drive was non-dos, now I'm searching the net for some crazy disk tools to try.

....This is gonna get messy! :-)

You should be able to use fdisk in linux to set the partition type to either FAT32 or NTFS (whichever C: actually is) without damaging the data as far as I can remember.

Checked again in Linux and all the data on C: has disapeared, I didn't even touch the c: drive. Will have a look to see if any of the data recovery progs will find anything. To be honest there was not much there on the c: drive that's worth crying over, apart from the endless hours ahead of me reinstalling all the software, updates, plugins etc..!

The easiest oiption must be to take that drive to someone elses PC and install it as a slave or on the second IDE channel and see whats on it...

Or just give up!

Try this Techie forum that sheffield forums very own 'Vidster' mods on:)
http://www.cbttechs.com/forums/

i can only say whats already been suggested. Copy any remaining data to another drive and reinstall your OS/'s completely. :)