The End of my computer? Help needed.

[Malice-]

Ok. I used a program called Partition Manager to merge my partitions into one partition because I wasn't using half of my harddrive space. This worked fine. Then, I decided to use the partition manager to defrag the newly merged drive (which was working fine). Unlike the windows defrag, it required that I reboot so it could do it before actually loading windows. So I let it run overnight, to find that in the morning it was frozen. Nothing I could do, I turned off my computer, and turned it back on. Got to the screen that said "windows failed to boot: start windows normally, last known good config, safe mode, etc". Neither of these options work. Every time I press enter, to select an option, the computer just freezes on that screen. Doesn't budge.

I've had all kinds of boot problems, disk problems, etc in the past, but nothing like this. Is there any hope for my computer? If so, how can I help it? Windows repair? If I can't save the disk without formating it, is there a way I can get all of my files off of the disk first? That is the most important thing. Getting the information off, if possible. Thanks for any help suggested.

I'm using Windows XP Professional, SP2.

 

[phyrex1an]

As long as the file system itself isn't damaged then you can put the disk in another computer and save your files at that computer. If the disk is completely corrupted you may be able to use some kind of recovery program together with the previous method. However, I've never seen a free ware program that can restore more than a few GB.
God luck

 

[Dtere]

Yah either try what phyrex1an said, or you can put in your windows cd and use the recovery (not the console). It just reinstalls all the windows files and then boots up with all your other files intact.

 

[Malice-]

Im hoping that will work, Dtere. If it doesn't, I'll try making a new windows install in a different directory on my harddrive.. like WinNT3 or something random, and just grabbing the info that way. If that doesnt work.. I'll just put in a spare HDD and install windows there... and just slave my other harddrive and hope I can get the data off.

I dont think this partition manager actually merged my partitions. Maybe it did, but last I heard you couldn't do that on an active disc. It probably just made the operating system think it did by creating a splited-disc or whatever its called, that RAID driver crap... Which is probably why defrag totally screwed it up.

So regardless I wouldn't want to work with my HDD in this condition. I just want the data off.

 

[SFilip]

> I dont think this partition manager actually merged my partitions.
Last time I checked the "merging" was in fact mounting the other partition inside a directory of your choice.
But those partitioning programs caused a lot of pain to me in the past too. I once tried to do NTFS -> FAT32 which completed successfully, but windows couldn't boot anymore.
I tried defragmenting an ext3 partition with linux once as well and it resulted in linux unable to boot ("kernel panic").
So in the future avoid them as much as possible. Plan everything before you install and if you find out something could've been better...well live with it.

Now about the problem...as said above you need to know what exactly messed up. Hopefully its the windows installation so you can just reinstall. In any case you should move the HDD to someone else's PC as phyrex1an suggested and see if that PC "sees" it.

 

[Rad]

I wouldnt think a freeware program that modifies your harddrive would be safe in the first place... lol...

 

[Malice-]

I wouldnt think a freeware program that modifies your harddrive would be safe in the first place... lol...

It's not freeware.

Anyways, my problems are solved. I just bought a new 250gig harddrive.. and slaved my other one and the files are accessible. So.. problem solved, and now I have two harddrives.. So screw partitions.

 

[SFilip]

I wouldnt think a freeware program that modifies your harddrive would be safe in the first place... lol...

So, uh, using linux is not...safe?