OK...A friend of mine gave me his computer to work on...it was just the usual spyware crap. I cleaned it, and tuned it up, and gave it back to him. Now, 2 weeks later, he comes back to me after getting MORE crap on his system. He didn't want to bother me at first, so he took it to someone else first. Now it's REALLY messed up. Here's the current problem:
It's an HP computer with a P4 2.4Ghz, 512 Mb RAM, 80 Gb HDD. It has a recovery partition which apperas to be intact. What the other guy did was try to delete the main system partition, then restore from the recovery partition (if no main partition is found, the Recovery partition becomes active, and bootable). The problem is, it seems the other guy used FDISK to delete the system partition (NTFS), then used the FDISK/MBR command to clear the MBR. He went back to FDISK to create a new partition. The recovery partition now showed up as the C drive, and the D drive was the new logical disk in the extended DOS partition (obviously, FAT 32). Here's the part that has me scratching my head...he then tried to restore with the Recovery partition, which converted the logical drive to NTFS automatically. The files will restore from the recovery partition, but the system would not boot. There was an Invalid Partition Table error, and it just sat at that error. It was fine booting from the floppy.
This is where I got the system. I tried to install WinXP, and the initial file copying went fine, but after the first reboot, I got the same Invalid Partition Table Error. I figured I would start the partition over from scratch, so I went into FDISK to repartition. The Recovery partition (FAT32) was still intact, and the new partition was the extended DOS partition. I tried going in and deleting the logical drive, but FDISK says No Logical Drive Present. I then tried to delete the Extended DOS partition, but was told by FDISK that I couldn't delete it because it contained a Logical drive!
How can I get rid of what seems to me to be an NTFS partition contained in a FAT32 Extended DOS partition!?!? I'm sure I'm looking at that the wrong way, but at least it's a good way of explaining it.
I talked to the guy, and he doesn't care about losing his recovery partition, so is there a way to either a)save the recovery partition, and start over from scratch with the other 74Gb of the drive? or b) wipe the whole disk and start over?
Thanks for any advice, and sorry this is so long...I'm at work and kind of bored! Thanks.
It's an HP computer with a P4 2.4Ghz, 512 Mb RAM, 80 Gb HDD. It has a recovery partition which apperas to be intact. What the other guy did was try to delete the main system partition, then restore from the recovery partition (if no main partition is found, the Recovery partition becomes active, and bootable). The problem is, it seems the other guy used FDISK to delete the system partition (NTFS), then used the FDISK/MBR command to clear the MBR. He went back to FDISK to create a new partition. The recovery partition now showed up as the C drive, and the D drive was the new logical disk in the extended DOS partition (obviously, FAT 32). Here's the part that has me scratching my head...he then tried to restore with the Recovery partition, which converted the logical drive to NTFS automatically. The files will restore from the recovery partition, but the system would not boot. There was an Invalid Partition Table error, and it just sat at that error. It was fine booting from the floppy.
This is where I got the system. I tried to install WinXP, and the initial file copying went fine, but after the first reboot, I got the same Invalid Partition Table Error. I figured I would start the partition over from scratch, so I went into FDISK to repartition. The Recovery partition (FAT32) was still intact, and the new partition was the extended DOS partition. I tried going in and deleting the logical drive, but FDISK says No Logical Drive Present. I then tried to delete the Extended DOS partition, but was told by FDISK that I couldn't delete it because it contained a Logical drive!
How can I get rid of what seems to me to be an NTFS partition contained in a FAT32 Extended DOS partition!?!? I'm sure I'm looking at that the wrong way, but at least it's a good way of explaining it.
I talked to the guy, and he doesn't care about losing his recovery partition, so is there a way to either a)save the recovery partition, and start over from scratch with the other 74Gb of the drive? or b) wipe the whole disk and start over?
Thanks for any advice, and sorry this is so long...I'm at work and kind of bored! Thanks.