ok well i'll start off with my story...i downloaded my copies of fedora core 2 just yesterday...i burnt them and today i prepared to install. so i did. i did all of the partitioning i needed to do, etc in the installation (i resized a bit and gave some unallocated space to set up my linux partitions). so i created a linux ext3 partition and linux swap partition. so during the installing of the linux kernel, it gives me a cd error...telling me that the cd media cant be read, etc...so i hard rebooted my computer and did the media check which i shouldve done before going into the installtion. so it tells me i have errors on the cd, so i reboot again figuring that i'll just do a md5 check on the images and reburning them at a slower speed because the images were probably not corrupt. so then i got the fedora bug. "Error loading operating system". so i set my hd access type to LBA which fixed the problem. i ran fixmbr on my hard drives before too, but now i couldn't get into windows 2003. i got the "ntoskrnl.exe file is missing or corrupt", etc error...so i booted into my windows xp installation, which i'm posting from now...well here's the big problem. my 70gb of data in my second partition of my second drive shows up having no file system. so now i have no access to my partition which i have all my non-windows files on. which are reasonably important seeing how i made a seperate partition for all my files hoping it wouldnt ever be hurt in any way. its also the drive where i have my fedora core 2 images, so i'm redownloading them now...so at this point i'm looking at acronis partitionexpert and it shows that partition as None (D: ). at the bottom, it shows the partition with the red circle with an X in it...it's full with my 69.33gb of data. so the data isn't gone supposedly. i just have absolutely no access to it. in the properties of the partition, the errors section of File System, it gives me File system error: Invalid format. when i run chkdsk it tells me that chkdsk won't work with RAW filesystems...

the problem probably came from the fact that the linux ext3 partition came after it so the unfinished installation affected my files partition. when i try accessing the partition from my computer, it asks me whether or not i want to format it...so thats a no. i cant right click on it or it causes explorer and litestep to freeze up. so right now, i'm posting with 3 task managers that arent responding (because i cant start new tasks) and a my computer that isnt responding. with no litestep running either because it was also frozen earlier. and i'm looking at the acronis partitionexpert as well.

if you need any more information i'd be glad to give it to you...thanks in advance for any help

You might want to use the recovery steps outlined in this article:

LWN: Making Fedora Core 2 and Windows play well together.

Hope this helps.

thanks i'll try that out. i wonder if there's a way to fix my partition :P

There should be nothing wrong with your partition; that's the point. The problem is that the FC installer has changed the disk geometry table to something that's wrong, so the OS thinks that data is somewhere where it isn't and that the disk is set up completely differently than it is.

Basically it's like being given wrong directions-- you won't get where you're going, but the place you were going to is still exactly where it was. You are in the wrong place. So if you get correct directions, you'll find the restaurant/movie theatre/whatever is exactly where it's supposed to be, and you should find that when you correct the disk geometry table, your data will be, too.

how can i boot linux? lol. i have it installed but when i was installing i decided not to install a new boot loader...i've boot from the rescue cd and run but nothing's changed...

I am suffering this same bug however i can't seem to find sfdisk on the CD's can someone help me locate it, or do i have to reboot of the rescue disk or something to use this package?