Help Needed - Shista/XP Partition Conflict

G

Grindbot

Member
Greetings, was wondering if anyone can help me.

i bought a system with a 250gb harddrive preinstalled with vista. When i checked the hdd spec, it was partitioned into half exactly. Fine. After a day or so i decided vista was not for me & tried to format and instal xp pro ontop. Piece of cake i thought
icon_eek.gif
wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Half of the entire drive became hidden on xp. So far (during one of my many formats) i managed to get the entire whole lot visable on xp, but you have todo it FROM vista. E.G. boot from the vista setup cd, and change the partition size. Then restart machine with xp setup cd, and it can now SEE the whole hard drive.

BUT... it says exactly this from the xp setup

(131070MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on Bus 0 on Atapi [mbr])
C: Partition 1 [NTFS] 239370MB (130999MB FREE)

It says press C to change partition size, but it wont let you!!! And if you press delete it makes half of it INVISIBLE .. back to 131070MB hard drive. Then in order to change this you have to load the sodding shitsta again. Basically... shitsta has control of my hdd! & master boot stuff, which i don't understand fully as im not tech.

I just want to be able to install xp with the option to choose a couple partitions and there size, with no sign of shitsta in sight! I am now back to the original problem, im running xp pro with half partition hidden.

Using PARTITION MAGIC 8, i clicked change drive to logical partition - and it showed spec that the other half is there! SEE THIS SCREENSHOT>>>

http://mysite.orange.co.uk/files00/logicalpartitionshitstaproblem.JPG
It said it had to restart todo it, at first it gave an effor saying cannot lock drive, it restarted again and completed to 100%... so i restarted, and then the entire OS was gone AGAIN!
icon_evil.gif
icon_evil.gif
icon_evil.gif
icon_evil.gif


i will continue till the thing is resolved if it kills me. If anyone can help i will be most gracious.

THANKS.
JON
 
Hi Jon, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

Hopefully we can resolve this issue without any deaths occuring, we wouldn't want that on our hands now, would we? :wink:

Anyway, here's what you should do:

1. Get some sort of Windows installed. Don't care if it's just a gigabyte of the drive that it sees, we'll fix it.
2. Install EasyBCD.
3. In EasyBCD -> Useful Utilities -> Power Console:
Code: 
cd bin
mbrfix /drive 0 fixmbr /yes
mbrfix /drive 0 clean
mbrfix /drive 0 fixmbr /yes

Reboot.
Boot from XP CD, create a new partition, and install.

Hope that helps. Do let us know how it goes.

Mind you, this will clear the drive of all data, so be sure to back everything up first!
 
lol thankyou very much mighty guru :hail: i already feel less stressed *breaths

But i cant quite get it to work, :S First off the program starts "Error! No valid entries found" Then i assume i just type in that stuff in the power console command prompt, but the first line cd bin, says it cant find specified path.
Sorry im not very tech...
any ideas? Thanks
 
Last edited:
Which version did you download?

Try:
Start -> Run -> CMD.exe
Code: 
cd "\Program Files\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\Bin\"
then continue with the rest (ignoring the first line)
 
No, that wouldn't work.

These steps are bullet-proof, they reset your HD to factory condition.
The only thing I can think of is that it's not drive 0. Try using drive 1 and see if that does the trick.
 
Ok thanks guru ill try that. Is there anyway to test the drive numbers before i use that, so i get it right first time. Ive been formatting all weekend :??
 
Hey Guru,

Thanks for your effort so far, but you were wrong. Your method did not work reset my hdd, but the slipstream did! But thanks for trying.

However, *pauses/gulps* the method 'try a different drive number' did work....... to reset my external hdd........ which had 25gb of data/memorys and 7 + years worth of work on
omg.gif
omg.gif
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
omg.gif
!!

So now, HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLL
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLP i really DO need your help PLEASE! I realize it wasn't all your fault but holy shit in tarnation - tell me theres a way out of this, i know lifes about loss but this is ridiculous
 
What that means is that your hardware wasn't to blame - it was a Windows bug after all.

As for your problem...... I cannot believe you didn't disconnect the drive first.

There is a solution.... not easy though.

Download Acronis Disk Director 10 and install. Use the "Partition Recovery Wizard" to recover your deleted MBR from the external drive.
 
Thanks for your help guru, you saved my bacon, all the data was recovered :brows:

I cant believe i didnt unplug either, but i thought it took effect on restart thats why i didnt.

Also yes , it was an xp problem, aparently xp original was not made to detect such large harddrives so u need sp2 slipstreamed.

Thanks.
Jon
 
Back
Top