Existing XP partitions gone - Please Help

I have been using Disk Director Suite 10 – OS Selector (Build 2160) for several months now without an issue. I had 2 XP partitions on the first drive with available space to create a new Vista OS. I went to follow MudCrab’s How I did it Vista list and selected the BootCD OS, Hid the XP partitions , selected force Hide, booted BootCD OS, hit a key to boot off the Vista CD, started to walk through the install steps and when it got to the drive selection I selected the drive 1 to install, thinking it would allow me to select the partition size to create, but instead it saw the whole drive as available and created the whole thing as a partition and started to install as 1 big partition on the whole drive. I cancelled the install but now DD10 only shows 1 partition on the drive. I tried DD10 Recover partitions, but it sees none since there is no available free space. The OS still lists in the OS Selector but with a red X that the partition is gone.

Is there any way to get my original 2 XP Partitions back? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

I assume you don't have a backup image of the drive? It's always a good idea to create an Entire Disk Image before making any changes to the partitions just in case something goes wrong (which happens quite often).

The force hide option shouldn't be necessary for XP and Vista. This option is mainly for Windows 2000 and apparently it hid the partitions to the point Vista saw the drive as empty.

Since Vista started the install, you may have already corrupted the first partition beyond the point of recovery. If DD can't find any partitions (you'd have to delete the existing one first), you may need to try a different partition recovery program. Most have trial versions to see if they find anything before you have to buy and there are probably also some free ones.

 

Thanks for the reply. I have the data on different drives then the OS in case of corruption, it just means that I will need to reload the apps. I will try and delete the main partition and try the recover deleted partitions.

The reason I force hid them was from your post about how you did it (getting Vista to install as another OS). The problem was I did not create a partition first in the available space, and when I selected the drive on the Vista advanced install, I thought it would then bring me to a create partition type screen and I would have noticed it thinking the drive was blank. Vista automatically created the whole partition as the drive. When I tried it without the force hide, and created the new partition through DD10, Vista saw the 2 other OS hidden partitions and after Vista expanded the files and needed to reboot, It would just hang with a cursor in the top left. I used the restore OS selector and then selected the new Vista boot but it still hung.

I have 3 drives - Drive 1 for up to 4 OS partitions (only XP and Vista) each hidden from each other so they all use C:. Drives 2 and 3 are Data and custom install directories. Any Advice on the order and/or steps if I have to rebuild all. Thanks for the help.

 

Good. At least you didn't lose everything.

I also think that's what it should have done. However, I haven't tried that particular scenario.

The "hang" on reboot can usually be avoided by letting Windows format the existing partition prior to installing. I think you have to click the Advanced Options button (or something like that) on the Vista partition selection screen. For some reason Windows does not like DD formatted partitions. XP has the same problem.