Accidental Partitioning

[Rexman64]

Yeah, that title just about says it.

I have two hard drives in my gaming PC. An XP install on the C drive, and a blank E drive. I wanted to get a 95 install on the E drive so I could run some older games on this system.

I grabbed my 95 install CD and a boot disk I had laying around and rebooted. Once the command prop came up, I ran FDISK from the floppy. Created a primary DOS partion and everything...

Then the realization set in and I knew I partitioned the wrong drive. Took the boot disk out, rebooted, and sure enough:

PROBLEM LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM

Since I only repartitioned and didn't do a full reformat, is there anything I can do to save my C drive? Or am I going to have to wipe it clean and reinstall?

[Mithrandir]

I'd boot back to the floppy and run "fdisk /mbr" to rebuild the master boot record. That's pretty much the last resort, though. You migh search around online and look for something that will let you reallocate the drive.

Good luck!

[Rexman64]

I'd boot back to the floppy and run "fdisk /mbr" to rebuild the master boot record.

All I get is "Invalid media type reading drive C"

Looks like I'll just have to reformat and reinstall.

Well, thanks anyway!

[Da Rabid Duckie]

Wait a second, have you tried hooking up the hard drive as a slave to a second machine to see if you can salvage any files? Also, you may be able to convert the drive from fat32 to ntfs while doing that, which may let you reinstall Win XP after that. However I would delete (or move) the contents of the "Documents and Settings" folder so it doesn't interfere with the new install.

[Rexman64]

Wait a second, have you tried hooking up the hard drive as a slave to a second machine to see if you can salvage any files?

Uh... I just finished reinstalling XP. I wouldn't have been able to try that anyway, since this was a SATA drive and none of my other systems have that hookup. Thanks, though.

[Da Rabid Duckie]

Uh huh, well then you just go forth and become a happy cabbage, then.