I believe XP was reinstalled on the second partition(D)and the recovery partition(C)is still there,but not accessible,says protected by PC Angel.The F+other button(F10?)option is not present at bootup.Is there any way to do a system recovery with these issues present?Thanks in advance,oldtrigger

C: is not a recovery partition. If you download qparted, burn it to a CD as an ISO & boot the machine with it, you should see all the partitions. How do you know when a politician is lying? His mouth is moving.

Actually when I explore the C: drive it is 4.8GB and D: is about 89GB.Within the C: drive is a System Restore (folder?)with a padlock symbol.When I explore the D: drive I see all the folders you would normally see when opening up a C: drive.

Ok, that could be. It's rare but I remember seeing D: as a system drive in the past. How do you know when a politician is lying? His mouth is moving.

I agree with guapo. Someone has messed around with those partitions. They may have recreated them.

I ran qparted and here is the partition info:/dev/hda2,fat32,4.7gb,2.45gb used,2.25gb unused,boot flag /dev/hda1,extended,88.45gb,0 used,0 unused,lba flag /dev/hda5,ntfs,88.45gb,9.94gb used,78.52gb unused,no flags unallocated,unallocated,7.84mb,0 used,0 unused,no flags

/dev/hda2,fat32,4.7gb,2.45gb used,2.25gb unused,boot flag That ^^ looks like the recovery partition. Does qparted give you the option to boot from it? ____________________ /dev/hda1,extended,88.45gb,0 used,0 unused,lba flag That ^^ looks like the inaccessible/corrupt partition. _____________________ /dev/hda5,ntfs,88.45gb,9.94gb used,78.52gb unused,no flags That one ^^ looks like it's working. You said XP was reinstalled on a second partition. I think that's it. How do you know when a politician is lying? His mouth is moving.