HELP! Invalid partition table

[FXGuy3369]

Ok so a friend just brought me his laptop and this is what he did, and now I can't figure out how to fix it.

His laptop had a 20GB HDD partitioned into a 5 and a 15. The 5 was the primary, the 15 had nothing on it. So He tried to used partition magic to delete the 15 and merge it with the 5, but it would not work. So instead he ghosted the 5 onto the 15. He then deleted the 5 and merged it with the 15. So he now has one 20GB partition with everything he needs on it. However he did not tell parition magic to make the 15GB no converted to 20 into the "primary" or "active" partition. Now when you boot the computer it says "Invalid partition table"

Anybody know what to do????

 

[DanceMan]

This is a good reason to always backup before you change any partition info!

I dunno, try this (if you can boot into Partition Magic somehow, if not, might have to remove the laptop's hard drive and do this process on another PC...)

Get an external USB drive, and copy the 20 GB partition over to it. Then, delete 20 GB partition on the original drive, create a new partition on the original drive, and make it primary. Then copy the one from the USB drive back over it. See if that works. If not, then you should be able to get the USB drive copy plugged into another computer and read the files from it and re-install the OS and move the files back on there. Good luck!

 

[Gooberlx2]

Vista?

I've seen reports of people who've tried changing/moving/resizing their Vista partitions and gotten similar errors on boot. They just needed to pop in the OS cd to fix it. If it's XP it's possible he just needs to do a fixMBR or repair install. Other than that I don't know enough to suggest anything else.

 

[Pabster]

Grab the Ultimate Boot CD (google around)

It is easy to set the flags on active partitions and what not.

 

[FXGuy3369]

It is windows xp home. I tried the fixmbr, no luck though. I am trying the ultimate boot cd now. Will post again if that works. Thanks!