Cannot load WinXP from formatted NTFS partition )-:

[andrewmstein]

Here's my issue in short:

What I Did:

(1)Booted from the Knoppix LiveCD, ran "ntfsresize" from the Root
Shell and resized my Windows partition to 60gigs. (ntfsresize -s 60g
/dev/hda1, or something like that). Note: My hard drive is 80 gigs
(2)Ran fdisk and deleted the Windows partition in order to actually
make it 6 gigs (in the Cylinder amount, I started at 1, and ended at
+61440M). Important to note here, in my complete noobishness, I didn't
make this partition NTFS.
(3)Added another partition to fill up the remaining 20 gigs

Results and consequent Issues:

(1)I tried to load Windows after all of this, but it ran the
"pre-Checkdisk" utility (the blue screen. No, NOT the blue screen
of death) and said it could not find "autochk". Then it rebooted,
refusing to even try to load Windows XP for me.
(2)At this point I made a REAL mistake... I messed around with
Knoppix's fdisk again, changing the number of cylinders back to what I
thought was the original amount, creating an empty DOS partition table,
and the like. I don't even want to know what damage I caused in there.

(3)Finally, I got some help from another technically inclined person in
my house, and we figured what I had done wrong was not setting the file
system type for the Windows partition, aka leaving it at the default
(Linux)(. We changed it to NTFS, made *sure* it was bootable, and
restarted the computer.
(4)WINDOWS still wont load! )-:

I'm at a complete loss at what I did. Everytime I made a new partition
(the first partition in the table), I made sure it started at 1,
because I assumed 0 was where the computer actually stored the
partition table.

GOOD NEWS THOUGH: All my data is still intact on the hard drive - I
can see it through Knoppix's file explorer.

Basically (1) I need to know what I did wrong, and if the partition
table is beyond repair. (2)In addition, I'm wondering of certain
companies offer services to take intact data off a hard drive and put
it on another hard drive, including the registry. (3) FINALLY, I' m
really wondering if the Restore utility provided by Windows/my computer
manufacturer would probably get rid of partitions.

 

[andrewmstein]

At the beginning, I meant to say:

"(2)Ran fdisk and deleted the Windows partition in order to actually
make it ****60******* gigs"

....not 6 gigs.

 

[Rod Speed]

Here's my issue in short:

What I Did:

(1)Booted from the Knoppix LiveCD, ran "ntfsresize" from
the Root Shell and resized my Windows partition to 60gigs.

Presumably you mean that the drive originally had a single partition
occupying the entire hard drive, and you were attempting to reduce
that to 60G so you could have an extra 20G partition on the drive.

(ntfsresize -s 60g /dev/hda1, or something like that).
Note: My hard drive is 80 gigs

(2)Ran fdisk and deleted the Windows
partition in order to actually make it 60 gigs

This bit is rather confused too. Why did you need
to delete it when you had already resized it ?

(in the Cylinder amount, I started at 1, and ended at
+61440M). Important to note here, in my complete
noobishness, I didn't make this partition NTFS.

(3)Added another partition to fill up the remaining 20 gigs

Results and consequent Issues:

(1)I tried to load Windows after all of this, but it ran the
"pre-Checkdisk" utility (the blue screen. No, NOT the blue
screen of death) and said it could not find "autochk". Then
it rebooted, refusing to even try to load Windows XP for me.

(2)At this point I made a REAL mistake... I messed around
with Knoppix's fdisk again, changing the number of cylinders
back to what I thought was the original amount, creating an
empty DOS partition table, and the like. I don't even want
to know what damage I caused in there.

(3)Finally, I got some help from another technically inclined
person in my house, and we figured what I had done wrong
was not setting the file system type for the Windows partition,
aka leaving it at the default (Linux)(. We changed it to NTFS,
made *sure* it was bootable, and restarted the computer.
(4)WINDOWS still wont load! )-:

I'm at a complete loss at what I did. Everytime I made
a new partition (the first partition in the table), I made
sure it started at 1, because I assumed 0 was where
the computer actually stored the partition table.

GOOD NEWS THOUGH: All my data is still intact on
the hard drive - I can see it through Knoppix's file explorer.

Basically (1) I need to know what I did wrong,

Hard to say since you arent very certain about what you actually
did. You certainly ****ed the partition tables rather comprehensively.
Less clear if you also ****ed the contents of the main partition too.
In theory you didnt because you can see the contents in knoppix,
but it may be more ****ed than it looks in knoppix.

and if the partition table is beyond repair.

Likely not, but its not even clear what the original config was exactly.

(2)In addition, I'm wondering of certain companies
offer services to take intact data off a hard drive
and put it on another hard drive, including the registry.

Yes. Not cheap tho.

(3) FINALLY, I' m really wondering if the Restore utility provided by
Windows/my computer manufacturer would probably get rid of partitions.

Yes, but you'll lose everything on the drive, back to the original config.

There may have been a maintenance partition on
that drive too, that complicates the possibilitys too.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Here's my issue in short:

What I Did:

I assume you are following these directions:
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#cli
It says:
Repartition the disk. Warning! Basically this is the only error-prone step and several people made
mistakes here forcing them to recover by hand or from backup!

(1)Booted from the Knoppix LiveCD, ran "ntfsresize" from the Root
Shell and resized my Windows partition to 60gigs. (ntfsresize -s 60g
/dev/hda1, or something like that). Note: My hard drive is 80 gigs
(2)Ran fdisk and deleted the Windows partition in order to actually
make it 6 gigs (in the Cylinder amount, I started at 1, and ended at
+61440M). Important to note here, in my complete noobishness, I didn't
make this partition NTFS.

I find Linux fdisk incredibly braindamaged. Why does it start with cyl=1, not 0?

(3)Added another partition to fill up the remaining 20 gigs

Results and consequent Issues:

(1)I tried to load Windows after all of this, but it ran the
"pre-Checkdisk" utility (the blue screen. No, NOT the blue screen
of death) and said it could not find "autochk". Then it rebooted,
refusing to even try to load Windows XP for me.
(2)At this point I made a REAL mistake... I messed around with
Knoppix's fdisk again, changing the number of cylinders back to what I
thought was the original amount, creating an empty DOS partition table,
and the like. I don't even want to know what damage I caused in there.

If you changed the part-type and start CHS back to original it should boot.
Otherwise, I suspect boot sector corruption.

(3)Finally, I got some help from another technically inclined person in
my house, and we figured what I had done wrong was not setting the file
system type for the Windows partition, aka leaving it at the default
(Linux)(. We changed it to NTFS, made *sure* it was bootable, and
restarted the computer.
(4)WINDOWS still wont load! )-:

I'm at a complete loss at what I did. Everytime I made a new partition
(the first partition in the table), I made sure it started at 1,
because I assumed 0 was where the computer actually stored the
partition table.

GOOD NEWS THOUGH: All my data is still intact on the hard drive - I
can see it through Knoppix's file explorer.

Basically (1) I need to know what I did wrong, and if the partition
table is beyond repair. (2)In addition, I'm wondering of certain
companies offer services to take intact data off a hard drive and put
it on another hard drive, including the registry. (3) FINALLY, I' m
really wondering if the Restore utility provided by Windows/my computer
manufacturer would probably get rid of partitions.

I can't even guess unless you have dumps of the partition table before and after.
Here is how "findpart tables" on Windows lists the first partition starting at CHS=0/1/1:

--PCyl N ID -----Rel -----Num ---MB --Start CHS- ---End CHS-- BS CHS
0 1 07 63 25173792 12291 0 1 1 1566*254 63 OK OK
0 2 07 25173855209310885102202 1567* 0 1 14595*254 63 OK OK