Hi Gang,

It's me, with the Partition Table Invalid!  Somewhare, trapped on my HDD is my latest incremental Ghost image, but alas, no Restore CD.

My question is:  Does Ghost also record the First Sector of the backed-up HDD, which has the MBR and Partition Table (and supposedly, the elusive "2nd Copy" at the end of the sector)?

If no, well, wtf, punt....

If YES!!! is there some way to get the Ghost Image off of the non booting HDD, move it somewhere, and then squirt it back onto the non-booting HDD?  That would be an earthly miracle.....

olamoree wrote on Jan 20^th, 2006 at 12:49pm:

Somewhare, trapped on my HDD is my latest incremental Ghost image, but alas, no Restore CD.

To get a replacement Recovery/Restore CD you can contact Symantec using this link here.

If you give them your serial number you can probably get it immediately from their ftp website and make a replacement boot cd as well (using Nero, etc.).

Quote:

My question is:  Does Ghost also record the First Sector of the backed-up HDD, which has the MBR and Partition Table (and supposedly, the elusive "2nd Copy" at the end of the sector)?

I would have to say yes to this question, because how else could you take a Ghost image backup and restore it to a new/blank/unused hard drive in the event of a total hard drive failure.


Quote:

is there some way to get the Ghost Image off of the non booting HDD, move it somewhere, and then squirt it back onto the non-booting HDD?  That would be an earthly miracle.....

If the partition table of the hard drive is corrupted, I don't know how anything can be recovered until you correct the partition table.  If it's just the mbr that is bad, you should be able to take the non-booting hard drive out of one computer, put it in a working pc as a secondary hard drive, and then copy the files you need (such as the Ghost image backup) to a SAFE place on the working pc.

Then you could delete all partitions on the bad drive, and use the ghost image (be sure to verify it first) to recover.

Lot of if's to all this. . .

I would try to get a new alternate drive to test recovering onto so you don't endanger your only ghost image backup.  Also be sure you check the options about setting disk active and restoring mbr etc.

Which brings up the question, why were you storing your Ghost backup image on the same physical hard drive as you are backing up?  It should always be stored on a different physical drive for the very reason/problem you are having.

Thanks John, for your very enlightening comments.  Sorry to have misled you, the Ghost image is NOT on the same HDD as the OS (C:) but on the F:-Y: drive, the previous 3rd Physical Drive, now 2nd as the original 2nd Physical Drive has been removed because it would not show up in MyPC, just in the BIOS and Control Panel (a problem I will deal with later).  What I meant to indicate was that the Ghost image is on it's own partition (Y: of the F:-Y: HDD) on the now 2nd physical HDD (Fat32) but as I don't have a bootable OS on the C:-D:  drive, I don't have access to this F: drive either in this XP machine unless I move it to the Win98SE machine.  I only have this lame Win98SE machine to call out to the world and I understand that I need to download and burn the Restore CD on an XP machine as this Win98SE box only has EasyCD4... NOT upgradeable and NOT the best ISO burner in town!  So when I DL the Symantec Restore CD to the Win98SE machine and try to burn it, will it be able to find the back up on the now-2nd F: and Y: Fat32 HDD with the Ghost Image?  Is the Restore CD "generic" enough to be burned on "any" machine and then booted into the sicko XP machine?  

Where you say, "I don't know how anything can be recovered until you correct the partition table." are you indicating that the Partition Table can ONLY be restored from the Ghost Back Up or do you think that there is a way to re-write the boot sector by itself without doing a Ghost Restore?  I ask this because what is on the now non-booting C:-D: HDD with the Invalid Partition Table is about 12 days "newer" than the Ghost Back Up because after recovering from a previous "mishap" I had removed the 3rd physical HDD (with Ghost BackUp Partition Y:) to try to get the stubborn 2nd Physical HDD to show up in MyPC (which it didn't) but I was able to confirm that the data was still there using R-Studio demo.  When I rebooted after using R-Studio is when I started getting the Partition Table Invalid error message.  All this to say that if I am able to Restore the Ghost Image, I will have lost  12 days of work....  Ideally, I am looking for a way to restore the MBR and Partition Table by themselves to preserve "those last 12 days" of data.  I read where there is a "second copy" of the MBR and Partition Table at the end of the Boot Sector on the HDD and would like to find some proggy that can copy that back to the the bootable part of that sector.   Do you think that I am expecting too much?  Thanks again for your help.

I think I am getting a better picture of your configuation now:

c: won't boot and may have bad mbr and/or partition table
y: contains the backup ghost image (separate physical disk)

Suggestion:
1. Disconnect any drives except your c: drive.
2. Boot from your Windows XP Boot CD and take option to go into the Recovery Console.
3. Use the Recovery Console commands to try and get your c: drive repaired.
4. Use combination of chkdsk, bootcfg, fixmbr, and/or fixboot commands to analyze and fix your c: drive.

It seems if you accomplish all that with your c: boot drive, you won't need to restore any backup image using Ghost.

Also, you mentioned R-Studio.  I thought it had capabilities to fix/repair/analyze partition errors.  You might search using Google for other partition repair utilities.

http://www.google.com/search?&q=repair+partition+table+xp

olamoree

When you say you can not boot to your WinXP OS--what exactly is happening (and not happening) when you try to boot?

From what you have posted so far, I'm not sure what problem(s) you are having.

olamoree


Quote:

I only have this lame Win98SE machine to call out to the world and I understand that I need to download and burn the Restore CD on an XP machine as this Win98SE box only has EasyCD4... NOT upgradeable and NOT the best ISO burner in town!  So when I DL the Symantec Restore CD to the Win98SE machine and try to burn it, will it be able to find the back up on the now-2nd F: and Y: Fat32 HDD with the Ghost Image?  Is the Restore CD "generic" enough to be burned on "any" machine and then booted into the sicko XP machine?

If *EasyCD4* will handle an ISO file, then the downloaded ISO of the *Recovery Disk* should be no different.

That *Recovery Disk* is bootable, and you should be able to boot your WinXP system with it--regardless of whether you can boot from C:\ on that machine or not.  The *Recovery Environment* is loaded into RAM (system requires min of 256 MB of RAM)--and should not care what the status of the MBR is or bootability from the HDD C:\ partition.

Once booted into the *Recovery Environment*, you should have access to the HDD with the image on it.

Just as a general comment to anyone reading this thread--with the price of HDD's, I think it is wise to have a spare system HDD available--make sure you have the *Recovery Disk* created from the ISO download if you didn't buy Ghost from a retail source with the disk in the box--and make sure you can boot from the disk and can recover an image to that spare HDD that you have put in place of the original HDD.

Until you have that *Recovery Disk*, and know that you can successfully recovery an image to another HDD, you don't really know if you are using a *functional* backup procedure for your system!

An added thought to Ghost4me.John's suggestions:  If you boot your system to a Win98 Boot Disk you can run the fdisk /mbr command which will not only rebuild the mbr, but will zero-out the Partition Signature which contains the Disk ID and boot sector starting location.  If either the mbr or the Partition Signature is corrupted you would not be able to boot.  After running the fdisk \mbr command, remove the floppy and reboot.  WinXP will rebuild the Partition Signature, and will identify the first active partition on the first drive on the primary IDE channel as the C: drive.  If this is successful. re-attach you other HDD's, reboot, and WinXP will remember their previously assigned drive letters.  

Hi Stallcup, and thanks for the tip.  I investigated this "trick" and see where it is NOT recommended in the case of XP.  This from M$:

The Recovery Console, a troubleshooting tool in Windows XP Professional, offers a feature called Fixmbr. However, it functions identically to the Fdisk /mbr command, replacing only the master boot code and not affecting the partition table. For this reason, it is also unlikely to help resolve an infected MBR.

So, the dellema.... XP won't boot so what can one use to detect/eliminate a boot sector virus, if that is the case?  Other sources, Google Answers says:

Once you're in the RC, use the command FIXMBR, which is the equivalent
of fdisk /mbr (it writes a fresh copy of the MBR).

Which I have done on several occasions with no results.....

I am grateful for your help and would like to hear other suggestions to get off of this spot.  

Currently, I only have the one drive installed and booting with a Win98 boot disk writes the tools to the C: drive as if it doesn't even exist, yet it is correctly identified in my BIOS....  I have changed the 80 wire cable, changed the power plug, and all those mechanical things with no success.... yet.

Olamoree, not sure if this will help, but see the article “Create Start-Up Disks” at:
  http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1206398,00.asp

If you can boot into Windows using an XP boot floppy, it may assist you in the troubleshooting process.

Did you look at some of the resources here via Google?

http://www.google.com/search?&q=repair+partition+table+xp

Two partition repair utilities that I have read a lot about (but never had to use myself) are:

Partition Table Doctor
http://www.ptdd.com/

DIY Data Recovery
http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/

[quote author=olamoree link=board=general;num=1137775794;start=0#9 date=01/23/06 at 11:21:22]Hi Stallcup, and thanks for the tip.  I investigated this "trick" and see where it is NOT recommended in the case of XP.  This from M$:

The Recovery Console, a troubleshooting tool in Windows XP Professional, offers a feature called Fixmbr. However, it functions identically to the Fdisk /mbr command, replacing only the master boot code and not affecting the partition table. For this reason, it is also unlikely to help resolve an infected MBR.

So, the dellema.... XP won't boot so what can one use to detect/eliminate a boot sector virus, if that is the case?/quote]

Win98 does not remember Disk ID's and Drive Letter Assignments, it creates these each time it boots.  WinXP does remember, and the information is also recorded in the Registry. The Disk ID and the starting location of the boot sector is stored in the Partition Signature which is located right after the mbr and at the beginning of the Partition Table. The fdisk /mbr command is four (4) bytes longer than the fixmbr command, and this additional length zeros-out the partition signature, which is normal for Win98 and is not for WinXP. However, we can use this difference to zero out your partition signature in case it is corrupted.  When the Win98 Boot Disk is removed and the system rebooted, WinXP will be forced to create a new Partition Signature.

If you recheck my original post, I did not suggest that fdisk /mbr would rebuild the Partition Table.  My thinking was that since you thought your mbr was corrupted, and since the Partition Signature was right next to the mbr, that it too could be corrupted.  If either or both the mbr and the Partition Signature is corrupted, you cannot boot., so I thought you had nothing to lose in trying the fdisk /mbr option before you faced the agony of a clean reinstall.  I still think it is worth the try.

For the 4 guys that have responded, thanks:

NightOwl, yes, thanks, and you may recall that this was our topic back in November when this first started and we had the topic as "Test Bootable Floppy", which is now on Page 10 at the bottom with last date of 14 Dec 05.... since then, no real progress.....

Thanks, John, yes! you do have a clear picture of what I am doing.  I did as you said, with only the troubled XP HDD connected.  I ran all of the commands that you suggested and still no bananas....  I have run fdisk /mbr using the "new" fdisk and no progress.

For Pelonasm, thanks, the problem is not getting the XP CD to run so altho I don't need the 6 disk set, I DO have it!  It just duplicates what the XP CD does but "trying everything" I DID run the 6 disk set and clicked on the "R" as I don't need another XP reinstall!  I have the XP SP2 on C:\Windows and a "Parallel XP Install" on C:\WinXP2..... neither will start.

Thanks for the clarification Stallcup, I understand what you meant and of course tried it.... with no joy.... and yes, reformat, probably requiring a LL reformat and reinstall is "AGONY" in capitals!  I am a "fix-it" guy, not a remove-and-replace type and have/had great hopes of XP being able to "fix" itself, but alas, not yet the case.  I am (OT) currently doing a complete brake job on my car and my keyboard shows it!....lol

As for Partition Table Doctor 3.0, I have no capability to format a diskette on the XP machine, only the lame Win98SE machine so I get the message that PTD 3.0 will not run in DOS, which is what the Win98SE-made bootdisk serves up...... I may try that KB305595 disk.....hmmmm

DIY DataRecovery sounds neat and I have DLed the Demo to see what I could do with DiskPatch and I am encouraged with it, altho the Demo says Chances of Recovery: Fair, but it DOES show the two partitions on the HDD, C: as Fat32 Active Primary and D: as Logical Fat32 and the numbers look right, the HDD is correctly identified (as in BIOS also) so now I have just generated a log to send to DIY to see what they say about the Prognosis.....

Meanwhile, I checked KB305595, made the proper disk with the right boot.ini and it started.... yet another XP ReInstall! which, altho promising 39 minutes to go, took over two hours with the "entry point GetIUMS problem in MSDART.dll" which I finally got thru after 6 cups of coffee.... Upon ReBoot, "Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter"  which means to me that XP ReInstall does NOT repair the MBR nor the Partition Table! .... at least I have progressed from "Partition Table Invalid!" which I can't tell if that is a step forward or a step backward......lol...

I have also explored TestDisk, MBRWork, Part(ition)Info(rmation), SavePart(ition), P(artition)T(able)Edit, PTEditNT and SavePartition, each valuable in their own right.  I would say right now that from what I have seen on the forums and other gnashing of teeth, that it is IMPERATIVE to have a BACKUP of your MBR and Partition Table preferable in your safety deposit box!  Two copies in fact!  It would have saved so much trouble (so far) in my case.  Also, I would say that any Ghost Images should be set up so that they are STILL accessable even with MBR/PartitionTable problems which prevent me from having access to my 2nd physical drive as XP just does not start.  I am now a borned again BackUp maven (just as soon as I get this turkey working again!)

Your comments are always welcome and appreciated.

Thanks for your detailed followup.

Here is a great site where you can create various boot disks.  You should be able to create the XP ones on a Windows 9x pc (although most utilities want a DOS boot diskette to run).
http://www.bootdisk.com/

How to Create Emergency Floppy Disk or Bootable CD of Partition Table Doctor
http://www.ptdd.com/datarecoverydisk.htm

I hope you get this resolved and let us know which magic finally helped you!

Quote:

Also, I would say that any Ghost Images should be set up so that they are STILL accessable even with MBR/PartitionTable problems which prevent me from having access to my 2nd physical drive as XP just does not start.

As I understand your original problem description, I don't agree with your statement there.  The Ghost Images ARE still accessable.  That is what the Ghost Recovery CD is for--so that you can boot from it and then recover your system from the Ghost Image stored on your 2nd physical drive.  The reason you said you didn't want to was:


Quote:

All this to say that if I am able to Restore the Ghost Image, I will have lost  12 days of work....  Ideally, I am looking for a way to restore the MBR and Partition Table by themselves to preserve "those last 12 days" of data.

The reason you are trying to repair your corrupted partition table is that your backup is 12 days old.  If you wanted to use the Ghost backup (or it if were only 1 day old) you could restore it using the Recovery boot CD easily.

Did I misread your conclusion?

olamoree

You mentioned wanting to find a *second* or *backup copy* of the boot sector--maybe this will help:

How to Recover From a Corrupt NTFS Boot Sector


Quote:

MORE INFORMATION The Windows NT version 3.xx file system keeps a duplicate copy of the NTFS boot sector at the logical center of the volume, whereas Windows NT version 4.0 keeps a duplicate copy at the end of the partition. The Norton Utilities DiskEdit program can help find the duplicate boot sector and restore it over the original boot sector. You may be able to recover one NTFS partition for each hard disk or multiple NTFS and FAT-combination partitions for each hard disk.

Also, has this been mentioned:

How to Recover Lost or Deleted Partitions



Try this search:  recover boot sector



This site talks about a *dynamic disk*, but mentions two Microsoft tools that may help--*dskprobe.exe*, and *dmdiag.exe*:

How can I recover a deleted dynamic NTFS or FAT32 volume in Windows XP or Windows 2000?

Pursuant to NightOwl's suggestion, the following link provides information regarding Boot Disks with Symantec's Norton Utilities (NU) DiskEdit program:

http://www.geocities.com/thestarman3/DOS/bd98/SD1.htm

Hi Guys,  Sorry for the lapse in replies, but I have not been asleep!  I have been "fooling around" with this problem and to update you, I did follow advice and work ONLY with the affected HDD in the system, with not much progress, except that Partition Table Invalid! isn't the message now.  I am getting Invalid System Disk, put in system disk and press enter.   Now, I have reinstalled the formerly 3rd physical HDD and viola, the boot is instantaneous (as opposed to 5 minutes with the single drive) and altho I am not yet out of the woods, I CAN, from the multibood screen (you will recall that there is a Primary XP Install and a Parallel XP Install) select either install or the Restore Console, BUT only the Parallel XP Install will boot.... and it is bare naked with NO programs installed, but it DOES allow me to see/access any files/data on either of the HDDs.... however, when selecting the original XP Install, with the splash screen /sos-ed, I see that the drive letters are listed, and the drives are declared clean, then the cursor appear as if the desktop is going to load, but then there is an error box that flashes by SO quickly that even after 50 reboots, I can only pick out part of what it says, which is, "Not enough memory...... or ...... page file quota is not available....... " and that's all I can get!  Memory?  two 512 DDR333 Muskin sticks with no errors.  That cryptic statement is now the object of my search for its remedy....  Anybody seen that before?  Know what is means?  How to fix it?  Thanks again for your patience.

P.S.  I have been looking at MBR Wizard and may give it a try after getting some questions confirmed by the author.

Update:  The error message that I couldn't seem to read, right after the disks are declared "clean" is:  "Not enough virtual memory or paging file quota is available to complete the specified operation."  Which MS says is a Win2k Executive Status Error.  Now I would be required to edit the Registry while this Install of XP will NOT open.... so, any ideas?  I have checked, and the Registry for the Parallel XP Install is DIFFERENT from the Original XP Install, so I now must have two Registrys.... how to get to the Original one and what to do to make this Executive Status Error go away...... that is the question.

Meanwhile, WINXP2, my Paralled XP Installation is working like a champ.   I notice that SOME of my old programs, when reinstalled from my Program Archive (NOT Program Files) grab my old data from "where ever" and put it in the new install just like old times.... but not so with OE, it can't find anything to Import......

STILL trying to see drive letters on the NTFS drive that shows up in BIOS and Control Panel but in DiskManagement shows "Unallocated"... Any ideas on how to get it to show it's two partitions and let me at my data?  Thanks guys, hate to be such a bother, but I am trying......