Disk Director 10 build 2160 is not allowing me to boot back into XP

[alffy4]

Mud Crab I here you are the expert on DD10 issues.

I loaded DD10 (2160) on my XP operating system and now the only thing i can do is use my bootable CD it creates to bring up the Disk, View, Operations, Wizards, and Help menu at the top of the page.

I kep it simple im only using C: drive as Primary partition/active 37.25 gig and 7 gig unallocated. all i wanted to do was back up my drive so I could get rid of 38 gig drive and add 80 gig drive in its place.

i do have critical data on the drive and now it wont boot back into XP. I have the XP install disk and tried to boot off of it and was ok until i got to a point of re-install an windows said it didnt like the format it was seeing so if wanted to re-format the drive so i obviously escaped out of install because i need to be able to save the data on drive.

I also ran recovery on the same XP disk but im not sure what commands I can enter to try to recover all of C:drive.

I did get some errors during install as well but ignored and it seemed to get past them. What I notice now is at 1 point i had OS selector installed and activated and now its not and is telling me i cant install anymore due to lack of space required to install. whats up with that?

Please help all I want is my DATA BACK! Any thoughts on how i can completely un-install DD10 and save my data?:-[

[MudCrab]

Just installing DD shoudn't cause XP to be unable to boot.

Exactly what error message or problem are you getting when you try to boot XP?

Is the XP partition still a Primary partition and still set Active and not Hidden?

How much free space is on the XP partition?

What was your plan to backup the hard drive? Were you going to copy the partition or what? DD isn't really a backup program. TI is better for that.

Is it possible to post a screenshot of what DD shows (in Manual mode) for your drive? You can take a digital picture of the screen, if necessary (assuming you have a digital camera).

Do you have OSS included on your DD CD? If so, when you select to run it, does it give you the option to Uninstall OSS?

[alffy4]

Mud Crab

I have attached the screen shots you wish to see.

Unfortunately XP wont boot so DD 10 did somethinbg to it. I attached the error that i see on boot up.

Yes the XP partition is still active and primary. im not sure about hidden but i dont think so.

there is no free space on XP active partition but there is 7 gig of free unallocated space on the same C: drive. So disk in picture 37gig with 7 gig left over.

all i was planning on doing was copying partition so i could swap out smaller hard drive with a new one that was double the size. so from say 40gig to 80 gig.

And lastly i was able to install OS selector and Activate as well but once i rebooted it tells me now i dont have enough space to install. Puzzling:(

Please let me know whatever software i need to unistall DD 10, i just want to get my data recovered at this point. Keep in mind i have XP install disk but cant really do a install it tells me it wants to re-format the drive. I seen in previous postings that a acronis MBR would clean it up. But wouldn't i lose my data at that point? I ill do whatever it takes to get this recovered!!

[alffy4]

Mud crab,

My pictures are 1 to 1.5 meg each in jpeg format. I noticed your web site only allows 300k max. Any ideas?

[alffy4]

Mud Crab,

attched are the less than 300k screen shots. Please let me know.

[MudCrab]

It appears that the partition is corrupted. I don't know what caused it. It may have been DD or OSS or something else. DD can't detect the partition correctly (notice the little red "C" on the yellow bar). Also, the file system is shown as None and then the format type.

Do you have a Knoppix or Ubuntu Live CD you can boot to and see if you can access you files? If you have a USB hard drive, that may be the easiest way to copy your files off.

If you have a BartPE or VistaPE CD, that may work also, assuming it can read the drive correctly.

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When you tried the XP repair, it sounded like you ended up in the Repair Installation instead of the Recovery Console. You might try the Recovery Console and see if you can get XP to boot by using the fixboot and fixmbr commands.

How to install and use the Recovery Console in Windows XP (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654/en-us)

A discussion about the Bootcfg command and its uses (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980/en-us)