Acronis restoration has destroyed partition table; help with Bart PE / Hiren' s CD ?

Hello Everyone...

After restoring an image from Acronis to ( C ), Windows XP will no longer boot; only a little _ would appear...
I then used the windows live CD Bart PE, and I found out that there is only the drive C left; before the restoration, there was 3 other partitions, where one of them contained the Acronis image... !
Would anyone knows how to recover the partition table, using preferable Hiren ' s boot CD... ? Or do we need to recover the MBR... ?

To give further details, at the time I was doing the restore process on Acronis, it came up with the message '' corrupted image '' ; I then rebooted, and did once more the process of recovering, and this time, it restore the Acronis Image to C, and from then, it was impossible to start windows...
I could suspect a damaged sector on the hard disc initially, as the computer was already behaving erratically, but I did not run the CHKDSK process... I can do so now with CD Bart PE, but the damages have already been done...

With my limited knowledge, I could only think of taking away physically the hard drive from the computer, put it into an USB external case, and try to recover the data with the following software... http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/
I could then expect to find the Acronis image...
I would then reformat completely the hard drive, recreate the partitions, and restore the image onto the primary partition...

Before going in such drastic measures, I would prefer to find easier solutions;
This would be :
1 ) Restoring the partition table or MBR using Hiren' s boot CD
2 ) Formating ( C ) with Bart PE
3 ) Restoring the Acronis image, which should then be back on my ( F ) partition, if the recovery has been successful...

However, I have the feeling The Acronis restoration failure has just been erasing everything, and partition would not be recoverable...

Would anyone have an idea on how to resolve this issue... ?
Thank You for your Help... !!!

Arnaud

 

First I would use a "boot corrector" (paragon rescue kit 9.0 express) to try and see if it can start your windows xp. Windows xp is fairly easy to repair after you restore it and it won't boot. The boot corrector is in a bootcd and it will only write/change window system files. If you can get windows xp to boot, then you won't have try and recover the TIB.

Testdisk would probably be a better option for repairing your "boot sector" and it can also recover your data (including your tib) for you with the "photorec" addon.

The only problem you might have is that it looks like the restoration overwrote the entire hard drive, but the data is still recoverable but might take a long time.

Don't worry about the MBR, you can do a fixmbr/fixboot but it probably won't fix your problem (but it won't make your problem worst).

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

Thank You for your advice... I will try Testdisk, and see from there...

Arnaud

 

Test disk has perfectly succeeded to recover the table partition... I then transferred the Acronis image onto an external hard disc...
I reformatted C with the light version of Windows from Hiren' s boot cd, and transferred back to C an Acronis image from 2008; the one I was sure it was not corrupted as I used it before...
Strangely enough, 30 seconds before the end of the restoration, the same message appeared : archived corrupted... !
The partition table is once more destroyed, and this is going beyond explanation... !

As I do not see any other way out, I am going to go for the hard way...
- Removing the hard disc
- Install it as an external hard disc on USB
- Reformat everything
- Reinstall Windows
- Create 2 partitions, one with windows, the other one with the Acronis image, and restore it from there...

I woud not have thought Acronis was able to put us in such erratic scenarios... !

Arnaud