I've got an Athlon XP 2600 pc with a 40gb hard drive partitioned into 2 x 20gb running Windows XP

My hard drive partition drive C: has disappeared and needs to be re-installed. This is the 3rd time this has happened in the space of 2 months.


I'm using Windows XP Professional with SP2
McAfee Firewall and Anti-Virus, now using Windows firewall and AVG anti-virus since the 2nd re-install
Athlon XP 2600
512mb ram
40gb hard drive (3 months old)
NVidia graphics card (MX4000)
Internet via CAT5 UTP

Has anyone come across this before?

Please help before I throw this computer out of the window.

I've had a similar problem on a server quite recently. Windows 2000 Server SP4 installed and twice now, for no apparent reason, it has switched itself off one day, restarted and got as far as the DOS prompt, where it told me that NTLDR couldn't be detected, i.e. the whole Windows install was stuffed. The original install and the subsequent re-install were both on cleanly formatted hard disks - the second install had updated hard disk controller drivers as well, in case that was the problem. We put it down to dodgy hard disks in the end and threw them out and bought new ones.

First thing to try though would be the PC or motherboard manufacturer's web site. See if they have updated chipset or hard disk controller drivers.

Of course, that doesn't help with the fact that everything has apparently been lost. Has the whole C:\ drive partition literally been removed? When you switch the PC on, does it give you a message such as "invalid boot device" or something like that? If the C:\ drive is actually still there, then it might be possible to salvage the Windows install on it.

Hi

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, the computer says invalid boot device and goes into a loop, wher if you press any key, the computer restarts itself. I've created an image using Acronis True Image so I can restore it for the fourth time.

The second partition where I store My Documents etc is still there, it only seems to be the partition that holds Windows that's disappears.

I'll do another restore using the backup DVD and will try for new drivers as I can't recall ever updating the drivers.

Well I won't say 'let us know how you get on' as, hopefully, it will just continue to work and it'll be months before you realise that it's definitely sorted.

So I'll just say 'best of luck - hope the new drivers work out for you'

Thank you.

Hi there,

Have you tested your ram? or run a diagnostic on your hard drive? If not do both of these:

download memtest86 for windows and run it for an hour or so... (that tests the ram)

and also run scandisk on all your drives...

Regards
Mathias