I took the plunge and installed XP: NEED HELP!

[Guest LSangiovanni LIML]

Hi friends,so i installed XP; now i need your precious help.My PC has 2 HD:-HD one (60GB) has 3 partitions C: D: E:-HD two (20GB) has 1 partition F:In Win98 all the four partition showed correctly (FAT32)After XP installed here's the situation:-HD one C:----- correct D:------UNFORMATTED (File System RAW!!!) E:------contains D: data-HD two F:----- contains E: dataNIGHTMARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!What should i do not to waste all data in second HD?Thanks in advance for helpingLuigi ;-)

[Guest]

Luigi,From your description, the only thing anybody could say for sure is that Windows didn't recognise the filesystem on the second partition of the first disk. And since it doesn't assign drive letters to partitions that don't have a recognised file system, all the subsequent drive letters moved up by one. F->E, E->D.You say they are all FAT32. But there must be something different about that second partition. Once you work out what that is, you'll be much closer.In the meanwhile, you can use the disk management tools to set the drive letters back the way you want them. Right click "My Computer" and choose "Manage". Then select "Disk Management" and then right-click ths disk/partition you are interested in.Nick.

[Guest Ken Meier]

I think I understand what you need, at least I'll give it a shot. If your data is on the wrong drive letter you can easily change that by clicking start, right click on my computer and choose manage. A window will come up, click disk management. A window showing all your hard drives will appear. Right click on one of them and choose change drive letter and Windows will lead you you the rest of the way.Hope this helps,K

[Guest LSangiovanni LIML]

Thank you both, i'll manage that. But...the second partition on the HD1 is useless, so i could do dome experimenting; further it's not only a drive letter manage trouble, cause i need all data on HD2.Any hint?Luigi ;-)

[Guest Ken_Salter]

Did you use some kind of disk compression?http://saltydogfly2.avsim.net/images/avsim_sig.jpg"I am the keeper of the cheese; you are the lemon merchant"

[Guest LSangiovanni LIML]

No, i didn't at all. In Win98 all worked just fine!After further investigation i can confirm that WinXP has mixed my partitions: what now is called D:, and is in wrong unreadable RAW format, in Win98 was partition F: on HD2. The other partitions are just moved so D: became E:, E: became F:I need helping in making XP reading HD2 :-(thanksLuigi ;-)

[W2DR 1,860]

Luigi - I'm not smart enough to know how to fix the XP problem with the bad partition but, for sure, XP doesn't like the way it's formatted. But here's a thought that may work in case all else fails. Since your drives are still FAT32 you can set up a WinXP/Win98 dualboot to try and save the data. You can do this even though XP is already installed. See http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_repair_9x.htm for the instructions. If the partition can still be read by Win98, and if you have room on one of the other partitions, you can then copy the data from the partition XP can't read to one of the other partitions, reformat the bad partition, and copy the data back again. I know it's kind of a crazy thing to do but it might work if all else fails.Doug

[Guest LSangiovanni LIML]

Thank you Dougin the afternoon did a short flight test running FS2004 under XP.Despite of most simmer opinions i can say that image quality (on my PC) is far away better on Win98SE; surely drivers for my TI4200 128MB weren't the best available (43.45 i think) but also didn't notice any performance increase using XP VS Win98SE (here i use OMEGA 43.45).So i formatted my main partition and loaded the GHOST copy (yes, it's on the crazy partition!) i did save before to experiment.I need more time ...later onLuigi ;-)