Mr. Bond Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 Well...my computer problems just don't seem to end for me. After wandering the internet earlier on my secondary XP install, I went to reboot into my primary install to get some other things done (both installs are partitioned off on my primary HDD). Unfortunately, I was greeted with a "Error Loading OS" message. This was rather strange...there was essentially nothing I did that could have messed up my system. Nevertheless.... Long story short, the XP recovery console only showed my secondary partition as existing. Same thing with Diskpart and in Knoppix. I'm now sitting here typing from a temporary XP install on another HDD. Partition Magic tells me that the primary partition is just unformatted, raw data. I have absolutely no clue what happened here...one minute everything was fine, and upon reboot I get this. I could easily wipe the whole drive and start from scratch, but I've just got everything set up nicely after wiping it about two weeks ago. There are some things that I'd rather not wipe, as I didn't get a chance to back them up recently. If possible, does anyone know of a way that I can fix the primary partiton, or at least salvage some data from it? - Bond EDIT: And before people start posting google links and whatnot, I've tried most of them. It's not a problem with LBA, or BIOS settings, or anything of that sort. The harddrive went from working to not in the span of a couple minutes. =/ Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
ampTK Posted February 26, 2006 Share Posted February 26, 2006 Could it be a MBR problem? Edit: Try using a "recover a deleted partition" (or similar) option that is in many Partitioning software Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-64184 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Bond Posted February 26, 2006 Author Share Posted February 26, 2006 Tried both Fixboot and Fixmbr. Made absolutely no difference.... I don't see anything like that in Partition Magic...but I am attempting to use a demo program called Restorer2000, which is currently scanning the drive for files. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-64188 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Bond Posted February 27, 2006 Author Share Posted February 27, 2006 Hmm...well, I managed to get a utility that fixed the partition's boot sector. Long story short, the partition's hosed. I have no clue why...lost a couple of important things in there too. At least most of it was backed up.... Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-64356 Share on other sites More sharing options...
R. Bear Helms Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 Almost assuredly you accidented across a partitioning command using OS X Disk Utility. It is DEATH for XP, even if all you do is ADD a partition out of the free space on the drive... it does not play nice with NTFS at all well... had the XP been on FAT32, it wouldn't have hosed it. The major malfunction here is Microsoft does NOT document the structural procedures and standards for managing a partition table with NTFS on one or more primaries. Therefore, any utility that manipulates a partition table that isn't specifically meant to be NTFS friendly treats the partition table as if it were DOS partitions and stuff just gets clobbered that way. Big time. Never, ever, add, remove, change, rename, or otherwise manipulate the partition table other than when running an XP utility, preferably "diskpart" for command-line use, or the XP disk manager for GUI use. The life you save may be your own NTFS. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-64384 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tek_No Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 What partition type was listed for your primary (corrupted) partition??? Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-64600 Share on other sites More sharing options...
U.C. Posted February 27, 2006 Share Posted February 27, 2006 happened a lot of times to me. finally i realised, it was the faulty power supply. bought a 430w antec. everything was fine. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-64757 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superhai Posted March 5, 2006 Share Posted March 5, 2006 Maybe to late, but if the NTFS partition boot sector is overwritten (which i have realized is the case with os X disk utlity) you have a backup at the end of the partition. If you have a diskedit type program you will find the original at cylinder 0 side 1 sector 1 of the partition. The bytes 4-7 will read NTFS as ASCII. If it doesn't you have to find the backup. If you boot to recovery console FIXBOOT should be able to do this. If it doesn't and not very uncommon, you can find it manually with diskedit. It is at the last sector of your partition, so you should find it (search for "NTFS" or "NTLDR is missing") with like diskedit and copy it (should start with 3 bytes and then "NTFS" remeber to include the 3 first bytes as well) to cyl 0 side 1 sect 1 of your partition. Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-69504 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Bond Posted March 6, 2006 Author Share Posted March 6, 2006 I may as well clear up the problem... I didn't touch it with Disk Utility. Didn't even have OS X installed at the time. My harddrive just decided it was done, and pretty much died. Couldn't really salvage much off it. Replaced it, and everything's all hunky-dory now. Thanks anyways for all your help everyone! Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-69556 Share on other sites More sharing options...
sdelano Posted September 29, 2006 Share Posted September 29, 2006 Well I have the problem with disk utility and now I know why I am having fusses installing XP, Vista, and OSX on the same hard drive. I installed Vista, then XP, then went into Disk Util and formatted the 3rd partition to install OSX on it...I guess thats what messed it up. Is there a utility that I can use to format a drive in XP that will allow me to install OSX on that drive? Thanks, Stephen Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/10285-error-loading-os/#findComment-197889 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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