partition chaos after reinstall

alienjones

Howdy,

My harddisk formerly was partitioned like this:

C (NTFS primary) - XP System 1
D (NTFS primary) - XP System 2
E (NTFS primary) - Data for both systems

I had to reinstall system 1 due to a worm crashing windows.

Obviously something went wrong during installation, partition C was declared as a logical partition by windows installation routine and so boot.ini as well as NTDETECT/ ntldr for both systems are located on drive D now!?!?

Is there any chance of changing the logical partition C into a primary again without having to reinstall windows again?

Help very appreciated!

otiscom

Try a programme called Partion Manager, I have found it very useful.

alienjones

A solution for this problem shouldn't be a "try".

Can a misdeclared partition securely be corrected and set bootable afterwards?

yjwong

You have to set the boot flag on the C: partition. I know how to do this from a Linux boot CD, but not on Windows.

LzW-x

I type a long answer to this but it got lost. So the quick answer is:

- Use a partition program to convert C: back to a primary partition
- Use a partition program to temporarily hide D:
- Use Windows XP CD recovery console FIXBOOT to repair C:
- or just reinstall windows on it
- Unhide D: and your system should be as it was before.

What happens is multiple primary partitions on the same drive can cause the XP setup program to detect the "System Volume" partition in unexpected ways and corrupt your partition table.

You did not say those primary partitions were all on the same drive but I'm just assuming... So next time you need to install windows, just hide any pratitions you don't want setup to know about!

Partition Magic can do stuff like hide or convert partitions and there are freeware programs like Ranish Partition Manager... Let me know if you need any advice on finding the right software.