[LumpyNutz]

Hello my fellow geeks. Im not very good at hardware or software issues so please help me with this one.

Heres how my recent frustration began:
I was messing around in windows the other day and I found this tool to add a "partition" to my hard drive. Being an idiot and not knowing what I was doing I went ahead and added a new partition thinking "whats the harm?". And thats when everything got fed up. I'm not saying this is the definite cause to my problem but this is the last thing I did when my computer was last working.

Now this is my problem:
I shut my computer down after the partition and the next day I went to turn on the computer and on the black boot screen it says "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter". I checked all drives and flash usb slots cus it used to do this to me when I forgot to take out a flash drive after a reboot but there was nothing. So I went to BIOS and checked everything and changed a lot of stuff around and tried and tried again to boot up but still the same problem. So I'm thinking the newly installed partition could be the problem but I'm not sure, and I tried to delete the partition but I don't know where to do this. I have a XP disk but I rly dont want to do a complete reinstall of my hard drive.

Please anyone who can give me some step my step instructions or any idea how I could fix this it would make me so happy this is bs and I dont know what to do. PLZ HELP!

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What exactly did you do to create a new partition? What program did you use?

[edge2022]

What exactly did you do to create a new partition? What program did you use?

[edge2022]

If you have an XP disk doing a full re-installation would be the most straightforward way to handle this problem. You could also boot into Ubuntu, a distro of Linux, and use its partition editor to delete the one you created. I don't know how creating a new partition would do this to your Windows though.

[LumpyNutz]

I made the partition thru Disk Management in Computer Management. But even if thats not how the problem started, how would you fix something like this? (without full reinstall).

[edge2022]

Did you click on anything that said format?
If so than all your data is most likely lost.
Otherwise try to boot into safe mode
http://www.pchell.co.../safemode.shtml
Report back

[LumpyNutz]

edge, I dont think I formatted anything. I inserted the windows install disk and when it came to the part listing the HD and partitions there was still 55gigs used space and 5 gigs free space so I don't think my info was deleted... Also the extra space it shows in the hard drive didn't say anything about being partitioned so I think we can cancel that out as a problem. Im gonna try safe mode and write back what happens...

[LumpyNutz]

Okay I trues the get in safe mode but when computer starts and I tap F8, nothing happens, maybe my computer doesn't have a Safe Mode... Only thing I can get into is The blue BIOS screen. I messed with a lot of settings in here so maybe something is just set wrong... Here's what it says when I try to start my computer normally:

Boot From CD :
Boot From CD :
Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk And Press Enter

Also my system fan speed is 0 RPM, is this normal?

Please anyone who might know how to fix this a rply would be much appreciated.!!??!?!

[edge2022]

So are you saying that there is only 1 partition on your hd? Did you make the unallocated space in your hard drive into a partition?
For the fan speed~ I really don't know. 0 rpm means that it is not even spinning. Where did you get that info?

[edge2022]

Also the extra space it shows in the hard drive didn't say anything about being partitioned

Ok then. So you still have some unallocated space in your hard drive. Can you get me a picture of the XP setup screen when it asks where to install Windows (shows the partitions).

[LumpyNutz]

So are you saying that there is only 1 partition on your hd? Did you make the unallocated space in your hard drive into a partition?
For the fan speed~ I really don't know. 0 rpm means that it is not even spinning. Where did you get that info?

Yes, I used the unallocated space on my hard drive to make the partition.

I can't get a pic atm but I'll explain what the XP install screen shows when I try to install Windows:
It asks me where I want to install windows to and lists my regular hard drive space first, and shows the space that is occupied by used memory (something like: 55000 MB used, 4800 MB free). Under that it shows like 57MB of unallocated space that is on the hard drive. When I move the selection between the two of these it gives me the option to INSTALL XP on to the regular hard drive space, or CREATE a new partition on the unallocated space.)
So from the looks of it there is nothing on this unallocated space, so I'm thinking we can cancel out that as the source of the problem.

[edge2022]

When you can get a pic show me, but for now I can't think of what to do next.

[LumpyNutz]

Alright this is not an actual of my screen but I found this online and it's exactly what I'm talking about (except for the size of the drive mines something like 55000 used 5000 free). And like I said, whe I move the selection from Partition 1 to Unpartitioned space the options on the very bottom of the screen change from D=Delete Partition to C=Create New Partition.

[edge2022]

In this case you seem to not have even created a partition. In place of "[New <Raw>]" what is it showing on your drive?

[edge2022]

Unallocated space is not a partition. It is just empty space on your hard drive. Therefore, Windows gives you the option to set up a new partition on that unallocated space.

[wannabe1]

Hello LumpyNutz...

When a partition is marked as "Raw", it means that there is no Master File Table or the MFT has been damaged. My guess is that when you created the new partition using the defaults, it used the current partition as the target and when you shut down it redistributed the MFT's (there are many) which broke the file system.

If you have data aboard, there are a number of data recovery programs available...some free, some not...most of them should be able to recover the data from a previously formatted raw partition, but unfortunately, the only way I've found to bring the machine back from this situation is to format the corrupt partition and reinstall Windows. Obviously, you'll want to try to do the data recovery before you format.

wannabe1