My system is a home built PC with multiple HDDs. I have 4 GB of memory. Current OS is XP SP2.
Problem originated when I went to rebuild system. I disconnected extra HDDs after writing down drive letters and sizes.
Needed a legacy system with XP and no service packs due to problems with video editing software and inability to locate old patches that were necessary with SP1 and up. All the links are dead.
Long story short, I moved data to additional HDD and disconnected it. Currently connected HDD is 1 TB with 3 partitions: C, D, and H. I reformatted C, installed XP Pro SP2 (cannot find my XP pro disk without service packs so I'm moving forward with a newer version of video editing software). XP Pro computer management showed C, D, and H partitions. C was boot partition, for some strange reason D was listed as "system partition". Not sure why, was never this way before as far as I can remember.
I know it was a stupid thing to do, but I decided to install partition magic and see if I could change the system partition from D to C. I couldn't understand why system partition was on D when OS was installed on C. I did not make recovery discs. Also, data on D (approximately 40+ out of 48 GB partition was not backed up. I didn't think there was much risk since I've used Partition Magic in past with no problems and I was not resizing or moving data. Well system froze. I rebooted and now my D drive is a PQrP drive.
Didn't know where to start since I've seen several ideas after googling problem. Some say use PTEDIT.32, others suggest partinfo tool first, some say recover data first. I can move my data from H, and I don't care what happens to C. I'd like to recover D since I don't remember what is stored on it. Can I recover data without fixing partition? If so how? My memory of DOS commands is rusty. Finally, if you think PTEDIT is the way to go, do I just boot from PM installation disc - what commands do I need if it is a DOS environment?
You must have tried to use the "Merge" function to combine the C and D partitions?
If not, how did you try to "Change system partition" from D to C?
Your system boots properly at this time into XP and XP really is inslalled on the C drive?
What used to be D is now a pqrp partition that you can't access and it contains data that is not backed up?
What used to be on that drive, were those partitions originally made with Vista or Windows 7 or did you create those partitions during the installation of XP.
dancingdemon wrote:C was boot partition, for some strange reason D was listed as "system partition". Not sure why, was never this way before as far as I can remember.
dancingdemon,
When you installed WinXP recently (after the reformat) you had D: drive as the Active partition so your booting files were installed into the D: drive and the Windows files were installed into the C: drive. Not an uncommon mistake.
Use ptedit32.exe and tell us the "Type" of each partition.
Unfortunately it has been about a month since I last played with it.
This hard drive had 3 partitions, C, D, and H. I reloaded XP after reformatting the C partition using the XP Pro installation disc (and after backing up desired data from C).
Windows would not let me change the C partition to the system partition. It says it is the boot partition. I looked in explorer and the OS is on C.
I installed partition magic. I didn't merge the two drives C and D but was trying to change D from primary active to logical or something along those lines, but I'm sure I wasn't trying to merge them. Partition Magic appeared to get stuck so I rebooted. My thinking at that time was that perhaps windows would let me change the "system drive" to C if D wasn't primary active or something like that.
Yes, D is now a PQrP partition and it has old data and I think pictures I may need for my videos when I get back to doing them. I didn't back up D and I haven't tried to access it with anything except partition magic (I haven't tried PTEDIT32). PM identifies the drive as PQrP.
The computer boots fine to the C drive, although I haven't finished loading the video drivers for the add on card. Prior to this bad idea of mine to change something that probably didn't need changing, at least right now, all partitioning had been done through the computer management console in windows XP.
Thanks for the assistance. Hoping someone can point me in the right direction before I make another bad decision.
The drive never had Vista or Windows 7. And you are correct, I just reformatted the existing C partition and installed XP Pro with SP2.
I don't want to make it worse if I have a chance of making sure I really don't still need any of the data. There could be a few hundred scanned and edited photos in there from two montages I did for family weddings. I may need them for the wedding videos when I get time to do them and get software loaded that is 100% compatible with my hardware. But that is another story.
Since this is my 1 TB drive, I know that I've only had XP Pro on it. Thanks again for the help.
I'll run it when I get home, grab a screen capture and throw it into Paint.
Even if the data does not prove to be crucial, this is a valuable learning experience in trying to recover it. I'm glad there are guys like you both out there to help us out with our stupid mistakes.
In slot 2 the partition type is 3C which is PQRP. You will note it is the Active partition (booting files) with Boot 80. I assume this partition should be NTFS. Click in the 3C box, click Set Type, choose 07 (NTFS), OK, Save Changes, Yes. Reboot. Is it OK now?
D drive is back as "new volume". Thank you very much. This entire partition did indeed consist of edited baby/family pictures etc. from my niece's wedding video montage a while back and I may need some of them plus the clip art for the wedding video.
You saved me a major hassle in trying to locate any copies of these pictures I may have on the other two disconnected drives.
I'll never make this mistake again.
In the future, if I want to reformat and reinstall windows on a drive that is already partitioned, is there something I should do to prevent windows from making the next available drive the system drive?
I had planned on reformatting entire drive and starting fresh after copying all data from my D and H drives, but perhaps moving the boot files to C as suggested earlier would suffice. What will this do to the D drive? Do I still need partitioning software to do something to D after making C boot drive.
I don't mind playing around after copying the data off this drive, but will need to get another drive tomorrow to copy data to.
windows computer management now identifies drives as: C: NTFS Healthy (Boot) New vol D NTFS (system) and
New vol H NTFS healthy.
Finally, for my info, does a corrupt partition table need to be fixed before attempting data recovery? I always felt I'd get most of data back, but envisioned myself at a command prompt copying directories and files and my DOS is not very good anymore.
I can change the "system" (active partition) back and forth between C and D without any other tools by copying those files onto another partition and then using disk management to make that partition active. After I reboot, the label "system" is changed to the new active partition.
You will need to change your view settings to show all files and to unhide protected system files.
Then copy (don't try to move them) the 3 files listed above from the D partition to C.
Then in disk management, on the bottom section right click on the C partition and select "mark partition as active".
Ignore the warning windows gives you and click OK.
After you reboot disk management should now show C as the system partition. You can then delete those 3 files from the D drive, or just leave them if you want.
It's also possible that when you copy them from the D drive to the C drive you may find that they already exist. I'm not sure if XP would have been able to use those files when your partition was set as pqrp.
I copied them to C: Disk management doesn't offer an option when I rt cl drive C to mark partition as active
Should they go in a folder like Windows or System or System 32 - I googled "what folder contains ntldr in XP one of the posts mentions i386 folder. I don't see one in C drive under windows folder or system or system 32. I've seen this folder before, but perhaps I am remembering earlier operating systems.
The three files are in root of C in no folder. Should I reboot and try again to mark C as active in disk management?
when you say set active using PM boot disk, are those the rescue disks I never made?
Just for laughs, I opened PM and it says drive c status is none and type is logical and drive D status is active and type is primary.
I was looking around some other stuff looking for the i386 folder and it is in a backup or repair folder. I'm at my laptop so I'd have to search for it again, but that reminded me that when I lost drive D over a month ago to Pqrp partition, I tried last known good config and system restore to get partition back.
Do you think this is worth messing with? I can go find some floppies and create the rescue disks- or what do I use for PM boot disk?
I booted to DOS from partition magic install CD, but wasn't sure what to do there.
It would be a great feeling of accomplishment to fix this, but I'm wondering if it would be easier and more logical to go buy an external HDD to back up the 200+ GB of data on the D and H drives, reformat those partitions, delete partitions in disk management making one HDD again, format and sys drive and perform clean install of XP on a new C with the rest of drive unallocated space.
I'm thinking it might be nice to make a system image after I get all the apps reloaded and tested. I eventually want a dual boot with XP for my video editing and windows 7; that is if I can system image a dual boot with two different OS's. I'm not concerned about getting Windows 7 on until after I finish these family wedding projects which are now several years old.
Thanks for all the help again. I'll check forum tomorrow at work - neighbor's barking dog kept me up last night, so I'm going to try and catch a little sleep.
