I have no idea what happened to my windows installation. It was working fine when I went away for a couple days. When I came back, I powered up and got a weird message. I foget which one I got first but two messages I got were something about C:\Windows\inf\Biosinfo.inf missing and another that NTLDR is missing. Not exactly sure where to start with this problem except of course google which gives alot of results with solutions that don't work for me. In windows recovery bootcfg /reapair won't work. I tried fixboot and fixmbr (probably messed it up worse?) but they didn't work. Chkdks says there are errors but doesn't say what they are. I can't boot into windows. With that in mind can someone tell me what I can try to get this fixed? Whatever info you need let me know. Thanks.

Is your computer dual boot? If so, does the linux side work?

as far as repairing NTFS via linux - I'm not aware of any tools that exist that will help. You can certainly read ntfs, so if your disk has bad sectors, I might suggest booting a Linux live distro like Knoppix or Ubuntu (something that loads and runs the OS entirely from a CD without using the hard drive), then copying your valuable data from bad drive on to an external drive. Replace the drive, reinstall windows, then get your data back from the external drive.

Thats kind of a problem too. First to answer your question, no, its not a dual boot. I use Linux on a Live CD. I've tried the ms-sys tool but didn't get anywhere with that. So the problem is I can't access the drive in linux either! I can't mount it. Something about a "bad superblock" and "missing codepage or other error".

I REALLY don't want to wipe it out and lose some things I was working on. Can anyone help with a solution or a way to diagnose whats wrong? Thanks.

Download this:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

Burn it somewhere and boot from that livecd. It will provide you with all the tools you need to mount the drive (whether that's going to fix something or not is another matter but at least you will be able to access your data and back it up prior to a reformat, if nothing else).

With ntfs-3g, mounting a partition is as easy as

If you are not sure what your ntfs partition is, use fdisk -l to identify it. Once the partition is mounted you should be able to access everything in that partition under the /mnt/windows directory.

If it doesn't mount for a reason, post here teh errors.

Now theres something I never came across. Well i played around in it a bit (probably messed it up worse) and now when I boot it says "ḈInvalid partition table" with that weird character before it. It looks like Ill be able to get my files but is there a way to fix this so I don't have to reinstall all the things I had installed in windows? What do you reccommend I try doing with that CD? Whats really the problem here? The partition, MBR, or file system?

What I've done is ran testdisk. At the end it shows me my partitions:
FAT32 LBA
HPFS - NTFS
Linux Swap
Linux

Pressing P lists files. When I press P on the FAT32 LBA it shows a list of the things on the drive. When I press p on HPFS - NTFS it says "Can't open filesystem. Filesystem seems damaged." But my stuff is on the FAT32 so lets look at that. Any ideas?

Here is this if it helps you
http://www.efense.com/helix/

Having more problems...when I copy files to /root with testdisk it copies them as files that are less than a few KB...most are less than 100KB. The biggest is an mp3 that is 256KB. Also it still says "can't read superblock" when I try to mount it.
Not too sure if i need helix since it looks like just another linux rescue CD which I already have a few of. I just have to know what I have to do in them. Hopefully I don't mess it up worse. I fear I will so I need some advice from someone who knows about this. Any more info you need that I can give let me know. Thanks.

What does CHKDSK say now? I would scan the partition for errors with Partition Magic under DOS or Acronis Disk manager on another windows machine. As far as I know Acronis Disk manager uses CHKDSK but it displays the errors and messages that CHKDSK by itself does not.
*nothing to see here*

Seriously...I'm so confused on this I don't know what to do and I'm not too good with linux either. At this rate I won't be getting my files back...I probably messed things up. CHKDSK just says "one or more errors on the volume" How can I tell what filesystem I need? Can I still get my files if I re-write the filesystem, MBR, and partition? Is this what I have to do? I don't know...totally confused. Please help.

You haven't tried any commercial tools yet.
*nothing to see here*

Well...thanks for the help but I think it's gone. Thanks anyways.

Suit yourself.

The helix live cd link I gave you contains autopsy on the cd.

http://www.sleuthkit.org/
http://www.sleuthkit.org/autopsy/desc.php


Repair windows
http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm

Need to back up everything important on a hard drive because they are prone to crash.

If you know exactly how big your partitions were and what partition types were then you can restore the partition table by hand using Linux fdisk and you will be ok. But if you have modified the disk contents (not the MBR, but the actual filesystems) then recreating the MBR (which contains the partition table) won't help.

I have restored the partition table by hand more than once so I know it works!