HELP ME!! Im considering suicide! It all started 2 days ago, my desktop just kept disappearing and i would have to turn off my system for 5 mins then restart and it was ok. But now when I boot it says invalid system disk! I installed a spare hdd and loaded xp ont that. i started getting the same problems. I found that the power supply was playing up. So i replaced that and put my original hard drive in but still no boot. I ran the windows xp boot disk and it said that the c: partition was no recognised. So I attempted to fix by creating a new partition but this had no effect. I then tried re-installing xp but it says that I have to format the partition and then install. I dont want to format because there is so much important information on it. I have run a utlilty that allows you to view your files, and they are all there. but the program is a trial version and then requires you to buy it for 1500 Quid!! Has anybody got any ideas how I can get my information off the drive or re-install Xp onto it. when I setup as slave in a different system, it says 'drive is unformatted' when you try and access it. can anyone help?? PunK

PunK, By creating a new partition, you no longer have the ability to access the files in any normanl fashion. Once a new partition is created, Windows cannot access the drive until it is formatted. The only solution is to use some third party program that can access those files such as the one you mentioned. Hopefully, you can find something less than 1500. Michael J

try this: grab the BOOT.INI, NTDETECT.COM and NTLDR files off of that drive and copy them to a floppy. be sure the boot sequence in your BIOS is set to boot from floppy as the first boot device. insert the floppy and boot the machine. you can allso load up recovery console and then run the FIXBOOT command and see if it re-writes the MBR. good luck AJ "ye of itchy azz hole, have stinky finger"

Punk, if you put that hd into other system and it says "unformated" then it means the partion is damaged. I used to have the same problem and i used norton diskdoctor to fix it successfully. You can also try the windows scandisk and schedule a scan for that hd on boot up on that system.

I might be able to help you, give me an email address.

Hi guys, thanks for your advice. I tried the FIXBOOT but unfortunatley that made the disk unreadable. I also tried Norton Disk Doctor but that was unable to read the disk too. So I bit the bullet and downloaded a DataRecovery program called Active@ File Recovery which cost me $40.00 but I was able to retrieve everything off the disk, Including e-mails and address book.I carried out a format on the disk and created an extra partition for me to ghost to for back-ups in the future. I have reloaded everything and pretty much back to normal. I guess I have learned a lesson about backing up!!! N.B Beware of crappy cheap Power Supplies, they are cause of a lot of problems with Hard drives. This is the 2nd Psu you I have used and have replaced with a decent PSu now. Thankyou all for your help, i have learnt a lot on the way. PunK (Kinel would be interested to know what you may have helped me with, any chance you could post here so that others may learn form my mistakes?!!)