I am going over to a friends place to fix a computer that wont boot. If I run fixboot and fixmbr will that loose the partition information. There is two partitions on the drive.

I would be removing the drive & backing up the important stuff 1st. Never tried those commands, so can't advise. Another alternative is a repair. ============================================== Slave it to another HD/comp ( no need to bolt it in, just cable it & leave it outside the case ) & copy your stuff onto the other HD. You may have a choice of jumper settings on the master HD, such as master with slave or ms. ============================================= Boot off of a clean Windows XP cd ( your bios has to be set to boot from cd rom 1st ) choose Install ( Not > To Repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console, press R ) at the first prompt. It will then search for a previous copy of windows. When it finds your copy, it will stop at the next prompt and ask if you want to do a repair. Hit R at this screen. If it does'nt mention a repair > DO NOT continue. It will then copy a lot of files and appear to be doing a reinstall ( But its not. All your programs and data are safe, all you will lose, are your windows updates )

Why would you be running those repairs right off the bat like that? What is your friends computer doing beside not starting? I mean, how is it behaving??? Tomorrow the Stars!

"Slave it to another HD/comp ( no need to bolt it in, just cable it & leave it outside the case ) & copy your stuff onto the other HD. You may have a choice of jumper settings on the master HD, such as master with slave or ms." johnw is absolutely correct but, avoid grounding out the hard drive to case ect..I have lost a few being clumsy.Just a note.

Fixboot and fixmbr should not affect the partition information.

Thanks max00, I think I will try fixmbr and fitboot. I forgot to memtion that it is a laptop and dont really want to pull the hard drive out if I dont need to. When it boots it starts to load comes up with the login screen but when I put in the password it starts to load Windows and then flashes a blue screen and then goes back to the login screen.

you can try Partition Table Doctor to fixboot and fixmbr.