Partition Table Error

[Syreth]

After my old HDD stopped working for some reason, we ended up borrowing one from my brother. We are currently running Windows ME on a 5.5 gb partition, which is sketchy at best. I finally figured out how to somewhat manage partitions, but I am hitting a frustrating brick wall. When I try to install XP (using my laptop's reinstallation disk -- this might be the problem, I dunno) the installation goes smoothly until it hits a point where it must restart to continue the installation. However, after it restarts, it starts over as if I had never begun to install XP. When I try to start over, it says XP is installed. When I try to run the partition without the disc, it says, "Partition Table Error." I don't know what this means. I'm very unknowledgable at this stuff. Any advice or helpful tutorials will be much appreciated!

[Puritan]

I see no way to help you apart from reformatting your hard drive or using a partition management tool such as Partition Magic. The partition table controls how the room on your hard disk is partitioned into sections on the physical hard disk and what file system is used for a particular partition which controls how the data on the partition is organized. Thus. having an error in a partition table is a really bad thing. While utilities such as Partition Magic might be able to help you, such utilities are generally expensive. Someone else may have a better piece of advice, but the thing I would recommend would be to simply reformat your entire hard drive, which should solve your problem as the partition table will be recreated in the format process. When selecting a partition to install windows on in the setup menu of XP, delete the existing partitions and create a new partition in its place. This will overwrite all data on your hard drive, but will solve your problem.

[Syreth]

Thanks for your help. I might give it a try if there's not another way.

[Da Rabid Duckie]

I've got a solution.

Nuke it.

Seriously.

There's a program out there called Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) that will completely erase a hard drive, destroying any data on the hard drive. Whenever I do a reformat, I use this program, and aside from any wear and tear on the mechanical parts of the drive, it'll run like it was brand new. It does take a while to run, but it's so good at getting rid of files that some Federal agencies (there's a list on the website) use this on their hard drives before getting rid of them.

After that, just set up your partitions as normal.

[Puritan]

DBAN is great, just make sure not to have any hard drives hooked up to the computer you don't want formatted. I had a bad experience with a drive which was disabled in BIOS, but DBAN still started to format. I got all my important data back, but it was chaotically disorganized and if I hand't noticed the problem when I did I would have lost everything.

[Syreth]

Yeah, I'm only dealing with one HDD, so it shouldn't be a problem. So, nuking my drive will fix the partition table error? When I first read that, I was like "what the heck, is this guy serious??" But then I realized you were talking about a program.

So do I have to burn the program to a disc? Or are there obvious instructions that go along with the program?

[Puritan]

The program comes with instructions to burn it to a disk or install it on a floppy drive. It's pretty self-explanitory, and free.

[Syreth]

Thanks, guys! I really appreciate it.