Invalid partition table, trouble starting windows.

[Sevenupcan]

I would first just like to say thank you for taking the time to read my post.

Now onto the problem. When I switch on my computer to load windows xp it eventually states the following...

Novell Netware Ready Firmware v1.00 (940809)
(C) Copyright 1991-1994 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved
SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Dos ODI Driver v1.05 (990410)
(C) Copyright 1998 SiS Corp. All Rights Reserved

RPL-ROM-ADR: 00D0 094D 9104
RPL-ROM-IRQ: 10
RPL-ROM-PIO: D800
RPL-ROM-FFC: 5

RPL-ROM-FFC: 5
Searching for boot record from floppy..Not Found
Searching for boot record from CDROM..Not Found
Searching for boot record from Network..OK

Press <home> key to boot from local Drive
Boot Failure
Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in slelected Boot device
Press any key when ready

Searching for Boot Record from IDE-0
Invalid partition table

I've never seen this before, I'm not even completely sure what Novell Netware is. What steps can I take to successfully boot into windows?

I have the original Windows XP CD and have repaired the existing installation of Windows however that doesn't seem to have helped. Would any of the following commands help in Windows Recovery Console, CHKDSK, FIXBOOT, FIXMBR?

I have made sure that the BIOS are at optimal settings for best performance and should boot from the correct volumes.

I would appreciate any help on this matter, or even some links to resources or similar questions. Unfortunately I was unable to find any within this forum.

Thanks again for your time.

[richh0323]

When you boot up do you see the hard drive in the POST, if not check the cable to the drive, power connector, and make sure you hear the hard drive starting up. Check the BIOS config by pressing the delete key as you boot up, make sure that you are set to boot to hard drive, and it is in auto detect.

[Sevenupcan]

Thanks for your reply. I have checked to see if the hard drive is plugged incorrectly and that it is being shown in the POST. I have checked the BIOS and have it set to boot from IDE-0. However the problem still persists.

I only really want the some valuable data I have stored on the hard drive, so I tried to connect it to another computer to copy the files across, however it wouldn't show up in Windows Explorer, but it did show up in the POST. However I don't understand why this is.

[markdean]

When you boot into the Recovery Console, are you able to navigate around on the hard drive? At the console prompt, you should see a listing of files and directories. If you don't, then you will need to go lower to get at any data. No matter what, I'd start by ghosting the disk to preserve the state as it is since attempting to repair a disk's partition can make it hard to recover. If you have a virtual environment like VMware or Virtual PC, you can ghost the physical disk into a virtual disk and then work off of that. One of the great things about virtual machines.

In the recovery console, fixboot will write a new boot sector on the system partition. Fixmbr will repair the master boot record and is XP's equivalent of the DOS fdisk /mbr command.

[Sevenupcan]

It appears I can navigate around the hard drive. For example it displays...

C:\Windows>
C:\Windows> cd ..
C:\>

And it lets me display a list of the files and directories that lie within the current directory. However access seems to be restricted to all my other files ie when I want to change to Program Files it displays "Access Denied".

Do you or anyone else know of any good resources for learning how to ghost a drive. Do I need to purchase other software to do this?

Thanks for your time, I appreciate it.

[markdean]

First off, did you try running either or fixboot and fixmbr? That sometimes is all that is needed. And yes, the recovery console restricts which directories you can get to.

Another way to get at your data and copy it off to another location is to use NTFSDOS and a DOS boot floppy or CD. This program in read only form is free from sysinternals.com.

As far as Ghost goes, download BartsPE ISO image and burn to a CD. This has a bunch of tools on it including Ghost 8.0 and will also allow you to access your files and copy off to another location. With a second hard drive on your system or access to a network share that can contain the image of your dead drive, boot off of BartsPE CD and run the Ghost program under programs. The program is fairly intuitive.

Once you have a good image of your drive and/or your files safely copied off, remove the ghosted disk or unplug it and you can now run the various partition and disk recovery programs out there to see if you can get it to boot and run.

I cannot stress this enough, remember in data recovery scenarios, getting your data off is more important than trying to revive the drive. Only after you have recovered your data do you ever attempt aggressive drive recovery techniques.

I'm also assuming you have not been running a backup to another location or tape, correct? If not, once you are back up and running, schedule a daily or weekly backup using ntbackup to another drive or network share and make sure you include the system state information.

-MD

[Sevenupcan]

Hi Mark, Thank you for your reply. I am sorry my response is so delayed. I have done what you said and successfully retrieved the data off my hard drive. Now looking and backing up my system frequently in case of an emergency.

Thanks again for your help.

[pintree3]

I have a similar problem (yet to be posted), 30 hours of mainly reading posts here have finally placed me to you that gives me something of interest.

What does ghost exactly do? I have 4 partitions within 1 physical hard drive:C and D are NTFS. And about 40G of files I do not want to lose on partitions E and F which are FAT 32. Would NTFSDOS actually allow me to copy my files to my DVD-rw rom drive within Recovery Console or throuh it, I guess?

and in recovery console the comand 'fixmbr' says, '‘it may damage all my partition tables. This could cause all the partitions on the current hard disk to become inaccessible.” How likely is it that all partions will be dammaged with this command?

[markdean]

Ghost will allow you to create images of your whole drive and/or its partitions and save them to files on a remote or local file system. Once the disk is restored or a new one is installed you can simply restore the partitions from the images. Keep in mind that if the boot sector or other file system level problems exist, that will also be in the image so I always copy out the data I want to keep in addition to using Ghost.

On the DOS CD/DVD burning, if you have a DOS boot disk that has the ability to burn DVD/CDs within the boot image then you will be able to do so. I don't use a DOS disk much anymore since the WinPE environment is so much better. There are WinPE plugins for CD/DVD burning and Ghost along with other imaging/partition management tools available. You have the ability to enable the network interface and move files and images to a network location as well. I recently had to recover data from a friend's drive in which the drive was physically failing. There are tools you can enable via plugins to handle raw sector recovery when even the ghost and partition tools are unable to read the disk.

And on the fixmbr, yes, *anything* you do to attempt to repair the drive or MBR etc has the potential to make the problem worse. That's why the main task *before* doing any recover operations is to pull off any data you don't want to loose. Murphy's law comes into play here: If you have your data saved, nothing bad will happen when you attempt to revive the drive, but if you don't you will surely loose your data.

Let me know if there are other questions.

[pintree3]

Thanks :-)

below is what you wrote of special interest and within my square quotes my question/s.
You write: 'There are WinPE plugins for CD/DVD burning [
What is WinPE, how does one get it and it's plugins?]
and Ghost along with other imaging/partition management tools available [Which, where?]. You have the ability to enable the network interface and move files and images to a network location as well [Network location? I am a single home user. What I have is a 1Gig USB drive, this labtop and an extrenal 30Gig drive w/USB connection) I also have this cable (connects via ADSL phone plug)that I use in the past to transfer fles from my laptop to my PC but this cable uses software within windows, so I would not know how to use it otherwise]. I recently had to recover data from a friend's drive in which the drive was physically failing. There are tools you can enable via plugins to handle raw sector recovery when even the ghost and partition tools are unable to read the disk." [What are these tools? where do I get them?]

If I can transfer my files from my PC via Recovery console (I do not have a floppy drive) that would be great. As said, I have about 40Gig of files to transfer--They are music files, movies, word documents, software, photos etc.

thanks again

Mich

[brickester]

Hi
I know that this thread is dead long ago but I will try to revive it . I had same issue on personal laptop (contains many photographs) which I have compounded by my mistakes . The real problem started when I tried to re install win XP through recovery console . The R-Console showed one partitioned space on which I proceeded to install but then backed out because it warned about formatting the space. Even then it created one partitioned space (Fat) and leaving around 8mb as un-partitioned . In second attempt I ran fixboot and fixmbr but it did not help.
Now I want to backup the whole material using the method defined here . I am able to boot using a bartPE USB but I do not have Ghost . bartPE does not show any old folders but I hope Ghost might be able to do that . It seems that one has to buy this Ghost ,install it and then copy the specified files to plugins in bart.
Ghost 8.0 -corporate is available at $15 one CD download (http://oemsoftware.in/index.php?target=desc&progid=1008 ). Can you guys help me in deciding if this is the right path .

Regards
Brickester
(I have a 1990 brick)

First off, did you try running either or fixboot and fixmbr? That sometimes is all that is needed. And yes, the recovery console restricts which directories you can get to.

Another way to get at your data and copy it off to another location is to use NTFSDOS and a DOS boot floppy or CD. This program in read only form is free from sysinternals.com.

As far as Ghost goes, download BartsPE ISO image and burn to a CD. This has a bunch of tools on it including Ghost 8.0 and will also allow you to access your files and copy off to another location. With a second hard drive on your system or access to a network share that can contain the image of your dead drive, boot off of BartsPE CD and run the Ghost program under programs. The program is fairly intuitive.

Once you have a good image of your drive and/or your files safely copied off, remove the ghosted disk or unplug it and you can now run the various partition and disk recovery programs out there to see if you can get it to boot and run.

I cannot stress this enough, remember in data recovery scenarios, getting your data off is more important than trying to revive the drive. Only after you have recovered your data do you ever attempt aggressive drive recovery techniques.

I'm also assuming you have not been running a backup to another location or tape, correct? If not, once you are back up and running, schedule a daily or weekly backup using ntbackup to another drive or network share and make sure you include the system state information.

-MD

[ladson]

i have invalid partition error with my dell laptop when booting.
what is the way forward

[dlpgupta31]

Hard disc show Invalid partition table,