Lost Partition in XP Edit: Solved

[nirgis]

Edit: I was able to recover the partitition. It turns out that the drive had been converted to NTFS format, which is unrecognizable in DOS. To solve I booted with a boot disk, then used FDISK to delete the partition and then create a new one.

Thanks for the comments, however
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Hello,

I am trying to reformat my hard drive but am having some problems. Let me first explain my setup:

A partitioned hardrive with C drive installed with Windows XP, D drive formatted but no OS.

I am somewhat unfamiliar with XP, but what I have tried to do is boot from a floppy startup, which creates the temporary drive which contains format.com. Having done this, the computer has the A drive, floppy drive; D drive, which is the temporary drvie created by the boot disk. However, the C drive is now what was my D drive, the storage partition. I dont know what has happened to the regular C drive, it is not labeled as the B drive.

I also can't load Windows XP, it gives some startup error, which I dont see how would affect the disappearance of the normal C partition when booted from boot disk.


All I want to do is reformat the C partition so I can reload Windows XP, but for some reason the main partition has disappeared when booted from a Windows XP boot disk

Any insight/comment would be very much appreciated. I obviously dont care about any of the data on the C, the main partition, but am very attached to the data on the D, the secondary partition.

 

[earthman]

Are you sure the partition is not hidden? It may be. Also, why aren't you booting from the CD? Have you tried that?

 

[skiggity]

that's happened to me several times after an error with xp that kept me from starting up again. See if you can find your partition using a partition magic boot disk. Or else you can use some kind of free program to look at your harddrive...like i know IBM has one for their harddrives, not sure if the other makers do too or not. Partion magic might be good to try also...