[ykad]

A week ago I installed a WD 320GB SATA II HDD as an additional drive to my system. The old HDD on my system is a WD 70GB SATA with 4 partitions.

After installing the new, larger HDD, I formatted it using the disk management utility in Win XP SP2 and made two partitions (I: and J:, 150 GB each, NTFS, I: was made primary). Everything works fine and I started to store data on J:.


Today, I tried to do a clean Win XP installation on the I: partition of the new HDD. After the Agreement stage of the installation process, i just let it ran. When I attended to it again, there was an error message:


Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:


<Windows Root>System 32hal.dll.


Please re-install a copy of the above file.


I restarted the process and the message did not show up again. But when it came to the stage of choosing the partition for installation, I: was shown as D: and not allocated and not formatted (which is wierd). Nevertheless, I proceeded to format it again. As the installation started again, I was prompted that a folder already created as D:Windows and continue installing will overwrite all the files in the folder. I decided something was really wrong and aborted.


When I rebooted, the boot menu now has two entries:


Windows XP Professional


Windows XP Professional


Selecting the first option will get the same error message:


Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:


<Windows Root>System 32hal.dll.


Please re-install a copy of the above file.


Whereas selecting the second option will boot correctly.





The problem does not stop here. The second partition on the new HDD now disappears, along with all the data. While the disk management utility shows I: occupies all 320GB, Windows Explorer shows the partition only has 120GB.


I need help on solving the two problems:


(1) the boot menu;


(2) the disappeared partition and the recovery of the data.





Your help will be very much appreciated.

[mphenterprises]

Hi YKad and welcome to the PCWorld Communities. :D




Even though your two issues appear related, please only post one question per Discussion. This will eliminate the possibility of one of your questions being overlooked and the possibility of the Discussion becoming jumbled.

[ykad]

Thanks mphenterprises. I will take note.

[piyushsingh]

Hi ykad
First thing you need to do is to get rid of those multiple entrie in the boot menu. For that boot in to the XP that is loading fine and post the contents of boot.ini that are listed here.
Also as mph said your question has become too long and the things are mixing into each other . I too am not able to fully understand as to what all partitions you want to keep and what all can be safely formatted , etc. Give details regarding which partition on which disk is to have XP and which are the partitions that have your important data that needs to be preserved.

[ykad]

hi piyushsingh,

Thanks! My question is long because I afraid I do not give detailed information of the problem.

Let's solve the multiple entries in boot menu first. I have opened up the boot.ini and the following is the contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

[rgreen4]

You stated that you had a 70GB drive with four partitions, but do not state what OS was used, but it could be inferred that XP was used and that the boot partition would have been C:, which is the norm for Windows. The four partitions would then have been C:, D:, E: and F:. You added the new 320GB drive and partitioned it, and the partition letters I: and J: were assigned. Since G: and H: are missing, at least one would be an optical drive.

If you have the original 70GB drive still in the machine with a valid XP installation that may be what you are booting into. Disconnect the 320 and reboot. You do not need to remove the drive, just disconnect the signal and power cables. When you boot, you should have only one XP bootable partition - the original. Check the sizes of all the partitions.

Then reconnect the new drive and reboot. This time as the POST starts and gives you the funcion key options, press the key that gives you "Boot Devices" or something like that. On many aftermarket board it F12. This will list the two drives. Boot again into the 70GB drive and Windows should show all 6 partitions in Windows Explorer.

The first partition of the first drive (70GB) will be shown as C:, the first partition of the second drive (320GB) will be shown as D:, the second partition of the first drive will become E: and the second partition of the second drive will be F:. Check the contents of F: as the volume size should reveal it to be where you data was stored. Unless something has gone terribly wrong that is where your data still should be. Back it up now.

If you want a new installation of XP on the 320GB, then turn off the PC and disconnect the cables to the 70GB drive and reinstall XP from scratch. You may want to try a repair first, but do not take the option when the PC first boots, that will take you to the recovery console which was intented for professionals versed in text commands, and is all but unusable. Later in the process you will be offered the choice of reformatting or a repair. If the reformat is necessary, the format will destroy the second partition which when then later have to be redone and the data restored from the backup.

[ykad]

hi rgreen4,

I have tried your suggestion: Disconnect 320GB reboot and then reconnect and boot into 70GB.

The 70GB still have 4 partitions (C, D, E, F). The original XP was installed on C.

The 320GB still has one partition (I:) while J: is still gone missing.

I think something has really gone terrible wrong.

[rgreen4]

Do you have backup of the files you put on the second partiton of the new drive?

It is entirely possible that when you attempted the installation of XP in the first partition of the new drive you chose to format it, if that is the case, yes the second partition is probably gone as formatting a physical drive in XP installation generally takes the whole drive.

After booting to the original XP installation (volume c:) what is the size of the volume listed as I:

Note: because of the confusion of a physical drive and a virtural drive which is a partition on a physical drive, starting with Vista the OS now uses the more descriptive term of volume. Hence you have disc0 with volumes C:, D:, E: and F: and disc1 with volume I:. (Disc numbers start with 0).

[ykad]

Hi rgreen4,

Thanks for the reply and taking the time to help me solve the problem. No, I don't have backup for the new partition. I will be very glad if I have backup for the new partition.

When I tried to install Win XP on the new drive, I did format the first partition of the new drive (which was shown as D:/ and has a size of 127GB in Setup). That was because Setup said the partition is not formatted. However, I did not format the second partition. In fact, the second partition did not even show up in Setup because it was not setup as a primary/bootable partition. If what I did actuallly formatted the second partition on the new drive, then I should give up hope on recovering the second partition. May be this is the price to pay for my ignorance.

After booting into the original XP (volume C:) , the I: has a size of 127GB. This is what makes me curious. The disk management utility shows no unallocated space on the new drive even though I: only has half the size of the new drive. Thanks again.

[rgreen4]

Can you go into Disk Management and post the screen shot of what it shows?

While in disk management, simply hit the PrtScrn key and then open Paint. In paint, past the image and save it as a .jpg file. Then in the post click on the small green square !http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1! to insert the image.

[ykad]

hi rgreen4,here is the image.

!diskmgmt2.bmp!

[piyushsingh]

now the problem clears a bit. Somehow explorer not showing correct size for the second hard disk. Maybe due to some corrupt partition table.Run a disk check on that second disk. Right click on the 298 GB space (I:) and go to properties . In the tools tab will be error checking .Press check now. Make sure you tick automatically fix file system errors .
It looks like this.



Post after running disk check.

[rgreen4]

Thanks Piyushsingh - I hadn't thought of that. I noticed the discrepency in the volumes, but was scratching my head on how to proceed.

This comes from formating a drive from within the install process I think. I do know that XP does not like to partition drives while installing to the point that it won't.

[piyushsingh]

hey rgreen - I was scratching my head earlier on how to proceed when i asked this person to post the contents of boot.ini as it seemed correct to me . You handled it nicely from there .Thats the good thing about this place, there are so many members with loads of knowledge willing to wok together.

[rgreen4]

I agree, that's because we all look at things from a slightly different prospective. Of course we do have to be open to other ideas!

Some time back a member did not want to solve a problem in the general posting insisting on doing it with PM's. I felt like I had one hand tied behind my back because there was no other input and the PM format does not lend itself to thread discussions. We did get the problem solved by I have resolved never to do it again.

For ykad's problem installing XP and partitioning is the easy part, recovering the data on the second partition of the 320GB drive is going to be the challenge. Since he does not have a backup of the data, I hope no irreplacable data is on there.

Me, after losing data once, I now have backups of my backups to my backups. If in lose either both drives or the entire NAS, the most I would lose is the last 30 days, and some of that is duplicated.

[ykad]

Thanks rgreen4 and Piyushsingh for taking the time to help me solve the problem. I have run the chkdsk , but the outcome is not favarable.


I am just wondering if the original XP can't support HDD greater than 300GB and causes the lost of partition.

[rgreen4]

I honestly don't remember any limitation like that, but since XP by default wants the entire drive as one volume, I rather doubt it.

In your initial post you mentioned formating and partitioning with XP SP2, were you then trying to install an original XP (before SP1) on the second drive?

How important/critical is the data on the second partition?

[piyushsingh]

ykad said:

>I have run the chkdsk , but the outcome is not favarable.

Quote

I am just wondering if the original XP can't support HDD greater than 300GB and causes the lost of partition.

I think there is a slight confusion here. The problem is that your drive shows 298GB in disk management and 128 GB in explorer. You wont get more that 298 GB on a 320GB drive , if you are trying to get that extra 20GB , then its not possible. And there is no such issue with Xp with drive size as far as NTFS file system is concerned.

Also after check disk , does the disk management show exactly same amounts as before ?

[ykad]

Hi rgreen4,

Yes, you are right. I formatted and partitioned the new drive using XP SP2. But the XP Setup CD I have and used for the clean installation on the new drive is the original XP before SP1.

The most important data is tax payment record. But my bank should have a paper trail should I get audited.

[rgreen4]

Ouch! Personal or Business?

Any record in bank recons?

You may want to contact the bank before we proceed any further.

I don't think that the use of XP original to do the install after using SP2 to format. While there are different versions of NTFS, 1.0 being associated with NT v3.1 and 1.2 being associated with NT 4.0. The current version 3.1 has been used since XP with this format being released in Aug. 2001 while XP itself was not released until Oct., 2001. So all versions of XP as well as Vista are on the same version of NTFS.