Windows Reinstall Using Wrong Partition

[peternm22]

Hello,

I was doing a fresh install on my PC today (Windows XP Home), and I've run into a problem.

The main drive in the PC is a 250GB SATA drive. I had two partitions, the first 15GB as the main partition for the OS (the C: drive), and the remaining space used as a data partition (the G: drive).

When doing the XP install, I reformat the C: drive partition but leave the other partition intact (since I still have data files on it). Setup copies files, all seems well. Then the computer needs to reboot, and I get the error "A Disk Read Error Occurred" "Please please CTRL+ALT+DEL to reboot". Not good.

I try rebooting, and I get the same error. I decide to start the Windows setup again. It appears to have reassigned my former G: drive as the C: drive, and the drive I had just reinstalled Windows on as the E: drive.

When the computer boots, I think it is trying to use the wrong partition. I tried Googling the error message but didn't find much help.

I could wipe out the whole drive and start from scratch but I would lose ALL of my data (music, Sage recordings, everything)

Does anyone know if it is possible to reassign the drive letters? Has anyone had this problem?

Thanks.

-Peter

[Conejo]

Deleted my previous post, since your computer isn't booting WindowsXP. sounds like the boot loader or partition table took a hit.

If you have a USB drive enclosure you could temporarily copy off the data from the second DATA partition to another drive, then WIPE all the partitions from the drive and try setting it back up again with two partitions and a boot OS.

I'm not sure you'll know if the drive is bootable until you actually wipe the partition table and put a bootable OS on it.

[peternm22]

Thanks for the reply. I tried putting the drive in another computer to back up the files but they were already gone. I think I must have wiped the wrong partition out earlier trying to fix the problem. So I just wiped the entire drive, repartitioned, and I'm currently reinstalling all my drivers and software now.

My other (separate) data drive is intact, so I didn't lose everything fortunately.... a little annoyed right now, but it could have been worse.

Thanks for the reply again.

-Peter

[Paul H]

Just one more reason to have Partition magic (or something like it) in your toolkit!

[CollinR]

acronis is nice too, and youmight consider a 3rd partition next time. Then you can backup Sage as it's own partition. I only image the OS and the configurations partitions. Lump basically all the highly configurable stuff together SageTV/EventGhost/HAL. I don't even try for the video side, too much stuff.