Something caused my WinXP Pro not to boot. Had many different messages pertaining to that happening. Was set up with Multi-Boot MBR & 3 hard drives. The 1st drive 45 GB which was the master had 2 partions C: at 23-24 GB and D: at 19-20 GB formatted in FAT32. The 2nd 45 GB G: drive only had the WinXP OS on it with no partions and was formatted in NTFS. The 3rd at 250 GB SATA drive formatted in NTFS had 2 partions H: drive of 50-60 GB with the WinXP OS on it and I: 180-190 GB drive for storage only. C: drive worked fine one night when shutting down, the next morning it would not boot up. I had many different types and kinds of messages for the next several weeks trying to get this drive to boot up, because I had lots of important data on the C: partiton. The original failed drive D: would show up fine on Windows explorer and show the files there, but the original C: would not show anything, only saying this file was missing or corrupted or something and over time these messages became different and more pronounced and worse as if there was a Trojan or Worm at work on the file system, after I made another drive the master and booted up on it so I could look at the failed drive using Windows Explorer. Finally, and the last thing which has happened to it, NOW IT TELLS ME THAT THERE IS NOTHING ON THE DRIVE, NOTHING SHOWS UP EXCEPT A "BOOT" SOMETHING OR OTHER AND THEN IT TELLS ME NOTHING IS THERE BECAUSE THIS DRIVE IS FORMATTED WITH JUST PLAIN FAT OR IN OTHER WORDS FAT12 AND NEEDS TO BE RE-FORMATTED. BUT I WILL NOT RE-FORMAT IT AND HAVE NEVER DONE ANYTHING TO JEAPADIZE MY DATA THAT WAS ORIGINALLY ON THAT MASTER DRIVE PARTION C: I DO BELIEVE SINCE THERE HAVE BEEN NO INDICATIONS THAT ANY KIND OF FORMATTING OR ANY SUCH THING WHICH WOULD DESTROY OR OVERWRITE APPROXIMATELY 20 GB'S OF DATA FILES ON THAT DRIVE, THAT ALL OF THAT ORIGINAL DATA IS STILL THERE AND EXISTS. IT IS JUST THAT SOMETHING HAS CAUSED THE FILE SYSTEMM TO CHANGE AND HAS DELETED THE MBR AND OR SOMETHING ELSE HAS HAPPENED WHICH MAKES THOSE FILES INACCESSABLE NOW. CAN ANYONE ADVISE ME AND HELP ME TO RECOVER MY DATA ON THAT HARD DISK? THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANY HELP OFFERED!!!! THESE DATA FILES ARE VERY IMPORTANT AND I CANNOT LOSE THEM. My Personal contact via e-mail is at lescot@sbcglobal.net

All of your hard drives have at least ONE partition on them or you couldn't format them. Your post is extremely hard to read as it reads like one big sentence. A P3 computer will not support a 250GB hard drive. A 48 bit LBA compliant BIOS is required to use a 250GB hard drive. Using that drive will or in your case, did corrupt the data. To verify what I am stating reboot the computer and watch the POST screens at start up. ALL your drives must be properly identified by both the model and the FULL drive capacity. Your 250GB will be identified as 127/137GB if I am correct. Look at the link below for a further explanation of 48 bit LBA compliance. http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm

Thanks for the info & help. Sorry my explanation was written so terribly bad, because I am not the best writer in the world. I DIDN'T BREAK UP INTO PARAGRAPHS, BUT I DID FINISH EACH SENTENCE I THINK WITH A PERIOD OR QUESTION MARK; DIDN'T I OtheHill? I am curious about one thing though? All info I have read says that FAT32 will support drives up to around 234 GB's I think and then any larger than that should be formatted in NTFS. I have not read anything about Pentium III not supporting a 250 GB Hard Disk. Anyway, the 250 Gig hard drive was only accessed on rare occasions using mainly Windows Explorer. I never booted up on it but only maybe once or twice in the Multi-Boot list on startup. It was only mainly used as storage and not as a boot up disk. I should have backed up all my important data files from C: into the 250 GB I: drive, but did not. The system worked fine setup like this for nearly 2 years anyway. And it always did show in Windows Explorer's list and showed all the files and folders on it. The C: drive was also listed in "My Computer" and always showed the proper amount of size, how many data files on it, free space, etc., and that info was always correct on the I: drive. The 45 GB hard disk which was the main boot disk with C: partition and D: partion is the one which had problems anyway, not the 250 GB SATA Drive. And, for a long time until just recently it showed the D: as correct and the files/folders on it as being ok, only the C: was not listing correctly. Now C: only shows one file on it which says it is "BOOT????" something or other. No other files or folders are listed on it now, because something changed it from FAT32 file system to FAT12. Therefor nothing else shows up there, but I am positive my files and folders are still on that drive. HOW CAN I CHANGE THE C: PARTITION FROM FAT OR FAT12 FORMAT BACK INTO FAT32, WITHOUT REFORMATTING THE HARD DRIVE AND LOSING ALL MY DATA? THAT IS THE MAIN QUESTION I GUESS. All responses welcomed, because saving those data files on the C: drive is very important to me. And, YES I SHOULD HAVE DONE A BACK UP, but alas I did not. DATA RECOVERY companies charge a fortune to save what they can and living on disability income could never afford to do that. Any help is greatly appreciated. Les

Like I said above your posts are difficult to read. Try using some paragraphs. Did you watch the POST screens as I suggested? What did you see?

Are you behind a router/firewall? Your drive sounds like it was hacked by a highschool kid. Real hackers make it so you don't even know they were there. Fat12 is unlikely since it was the format for floppy disks or drives 16mb or less. Fat16 gave you the max 2048mb for partition size. After confirming the bios is seeing the drive correctly you need to download the drive manufacturers diagnostic software and run it to make sure the drive is OK. Assuming no mechanical issues your next step would be to purchase data recovery software via the web. You should be able to find a link on this forums home page. Run it to correct the corrupted partition table and file allocation table. 'tis the season to be of good cheer. Wishing one and all happy times with family and friends.