Hi,

My comp got rebooted due to a power fluctuation and now I cannot login.

The first error that I got was hal.dll missing/corrupted so I tried to repair the XP installation. I rewrote the MBR as a start but that changed the boot device to hda2 instead of hda5 and I had to abort the repair idea.

Here's the output of fdisk (I am running Knoppix right now):
====================================================
root@ttyp0[knoppix]# fdisk /dev/hda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 4865.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 4462 35840983+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda2 4463 4865 3237097+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda5 * 1 765 6144799+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 766 2040 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda7 2041 4462 19454683+ b Win95 FAT32
====================================================

My XP installation was in hda5 but now the drive cannot be mounted due to a "bad superblock" error.
Connecting the drive to another machine as slave shows this partition as NTFS, but when I use XP installation CD the partition shows up as unknown with the whole partition as free!

I need to recover the data as a number of the project files in "My Documents" are needed urgently for submission.

PLEASE HELP!

Regards,
Rahul

email me if you have any suggestions or if you think you can help me in any way: rahulraj@iiml.ac.in

I would try mounting the XP partition from Knoppix. Then you may be able to recover your files.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerwork...y/l-knopx.html

As for your errors, you will probably have to re-partition.

Quoting from original post:
==============
My XP installation was in hda5 but now the drive cannot be mounted due to a "bad superblock" error.
==============

Any other idea?? How do I mount an NTFS partition with a "bad suprblock"

Desparately waiting for a streak of light...

Regards,
Rahul