MBR & Partition Table
Hey all, my first post.....and it's a problem,
Here's my story:
So, I downloaded Linux RedHat 9 and created some unpartitioned space on my only physical hard drive, then I proceeded to install it thru the graphical setup for a destop machine, and i told the install to use the unpartitioned space, and I used GRUB, the thing is i also have WinXP on the first 15 gig of the hard drive in NTFS format, and linux partitions had 5 gig. Everything worked fine, I could boot into either WinXP or RedHat 9. But then linux ran out of space and went into a constant loop of logging in, but thats not the point.
At this time i loaded windows and started PartitionMagic 8, I deleted the linux partitions thinking that my computer will be back to normal (e.g. loading WinXP all the time). I rebooted my computer and the grub command line interface came up....I researched on the net and something said that i had to re-write my MBR, so i did. I think i used the "fixmbr //Device/Harddisk0" command in the recovery console with the WinXP cd, anyway, that didnt work, now when I booted it came up with "invalid partition table", so I tried a few more MBR fixing tools. I tried: "fixboot C:" in recovery console and "fdisk /mbr", neither worked.
But now when i boot, I get the message "NTLDR is missing", I put my harddrive into another computer and my main WinXP 15 Gig NTFS partition was reported as a 15 Gig FAT16 partition. Why?
Are one of the MBR fixing tools not compatible with NTFS and just wrote a FAT16 partition instead?? Is there any way to convert the FAT16 MBR/Partition Table back into the proper NTFS??
I'm all ears right now, i've tried everything I know, any help whatsoever will be greatly appreciated...
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