Very strange problem!

[explrsport]

Hi guys, I could really use some ideas here. I recently built a new PC for my father, specs are:

P4C 2.4
Intel i865PERL
Kingston DDR400
Maxtor 120GB SATA using NTFS

It's been running fine for about 2 months, until this morning. Upon boot up, he recieved a message saying NTOSKRNL.exe needed to be reinstalled. That would be easy....except that Windows cannot see the hard drive anymore, although the BIOS does. I ran the Recovery Console and a command prompt, and the C: drive cannot be found. When I attempted to reinstall Windows, it sees a hard drive, and reports two partitions, an 8MB (I'm guessing MBR) and a 112GB (the main drive). Status of the main partition is "Unknown". Does anyone have some ideas??? Has the partition somehow been blown away?

 

[Cogman]

Humm, very fishy. I guess the best way to fix this is to delete the partitions (via boot disk) reboot, remake the partions, reboot, format the partitions, reboot to windows install disk. Really you probibly dont need to reboot, just exit out of safedisk and make sure it writes it. however reboots usually make sure everything is nice and clean.

 

[explrsport]

I can't lose the data on the drive, that's the main concern.