Hi. Hope someone can give me some clues on the following. I have 6 partitions on my 80 GB drive; FAT32 for Win98, NTFS for Win2k, an NTFS partiton for data, a FAT32 partition for common data and 2 partitions for Linux. Today I formatted the Win2k partition and installed a fresh copy of WinXP in its place. The install went ok, though it did say that it was making a modification to drive C: after it ran the initial check of the drive. But when the install completed I couldn't access the NTFS data partition - it gave an Access Denied message when I double clicked on the icon in exporer. The Disk Management snap-in showed the drive and said it was healthy, but when I right clicked and selected properties it showed it as zero size and - if I remember correctly - as Raw. Luckily I made a ghost of my Win2k installation and, having restored it, I can access the NTFS partition again, but I am at a loss as to why WinXP couldn't access it as well. Any ideas? I really do want to convert to XP without having to wipe the whole drive! Thanks Andy

Look at the obvious...was this XP Pro or Home? In other words were the workgroups the same and the user? Somehow the data partition may have been looked at as file sharing as it was created in a different OS, so were permissions allowed both ways? By the way there we never suggest upgrading to XP from any OS except 2000. the core of 2000 is really nthe same and you really can do a successful update in this one case.

Maybe it wasn't clear but I'm not talking about network access - the OS can't see the NTFS partition on the SAME drive. Since I went from Win2k to XPpro I wasn't really expecting, especially as it was a clean install and not an upgrade.

Wow that is really difficult to explain... What about doing an update to XP from 2000 as I suggested..making a Ghost first in case something else goes wrong?

A trawl around the www suggests there is a possibility for this issue when going from XP to W2K versions of ntfs (XP will convert any W2K version of ntfs5 it finds to the slightly later/different XP version) - but W2K to XP??? Not the answer you're looking for I know; but I guess one way to get over to XP entirely as you wish... is to make dual-copies/backups of all data etc. - off the system entirely (CDR/RW or DVD). Then start afresh: reconfigure the drive afresh for XP and install XP. Logically make both Primry/Extended partitions; the latter for data only. A trawl using: W2K ntfs partition seen as raw in XP brought up these hits. There are a few others out there too but none really seem to give clear/true reason for the event? http://discussions.virtualdr.com/archive/index.php/t-147274.html http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10727 Incidentally in a 2003 dated post there was a similar (unsolved...) with NT4 in this regard. http://www.computing.net/windowsnt/wwwboard/forum/21640.html This link/post had similar issues... http://www.winserverkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/windows-2000-hardware/5038/NTFS-Partitions-suddenly-unreadable-and-transformed (sorry about the long link...) If you do ever find the cause perhaps you'll post it here? Useful to know why etc... Incidentally I'm wondering if the message at the start of XP setup has any bearing... viz: "...The install went ok, though it did say that it was making a modification to drive C: after it ran the initial check of the drive...." Things like partition-table entries being altered in some way - thus rendering one or more partition(s) inaccessible? There are M$ KB items about corrupt partition tables and how to recover from them (under the NT family of OS). But as you managed to get back to your original set up and access data again I guess those KB are redundant at this time. Overall your experience is another good reason to backup all critical data first, before going into major changes on a system - especially if it includes ntfs areas (of whatever origin/generation)?

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I did read up some of links, but the knowledgebase article for recovering a corrupt partition table was pretty scary! In the end I took the "easy" way out and re-jugged the whole drive with Partition Magic, transferred all the data from the NTFS partition to the FAT32 - after backing up to a spare hard drive - and deleted the offending NTFS partion. It took me the whole day, but I'm happy to have a common data partition which all three OSs can access. So I guess I'll never know what the problem was - maybe something to do with that little "adjusting your C: drive" message! Thanks again Andy

Wow great idea and solution to strange problem!!!