Hello, this is what my partition table looks like on my secondary
master hard drive:

/dev/hdc1 - FAT32, Primary partition, long unused (old Win2K
installation that crashed and never bothered to recover)
/dev/hdc2 - Extended partition
/dev/hdc5 - FAT32, data partition
/dev/hdc6 - NTFS, WinXP installation partition

Here's the funky part.  I can't boot Windows XP which resides in hdc6.
 I tried Recovery Console and it gives me gibberish or "cannot
enumerate" errors for all 3 partitions, and chkdsk can't run on those
partition ("irrecoverable errors").  So, I started up Knoppix....

I can mount the XP installation (hdc6) just fine, but I cannot access
hdc1 or hdc5.  I don't care for hdc1, but dosfsck gives me a bunch of
errors for hdc5, and I'm scared to save the changes made for fear of
damaging the XP-installed partition, and besides, from the looks of
the errors, I suspect that dosfsck will end up writing worthless
gibberish files (the same way it is now).

I'm getting a new hard drive tomorrow, but for now, is there anything
more I can do to recover the file system of hdc5?  Any magic tricks
I'm missing?  And is there any way can I make hdc6/WinXP bootable
again?  Remember, although Knoppix accesses hdc6 without a problem,
Recovery Console cannot.

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Request for Question Clarification by sublime1-ga on 08 Apr 2005 20:24 PDT

nx2...

Have you ever heard of Steve Gibson's Spinrite utility?
It's often able to recover data from, and the use of,
sectors marked as bad by Windows:
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

I don't know if the chance that it will restore your
disk to a bootable condition is worth the $89 price
for first-time users, but, then again, you'd have it
available for future use, as well.

sublime1-ga

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Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga on 08 Apr 2005 20:32 PDT

Hi nx2, 

As a disclaimer... this may hurt
more than help since your partitions
seems a bit colluded. Someone should
physically look at your computer to
avoid making a mistake that will
cause you to lose data.

Have you used a boot floppy yet?
[ http://www.mirrors.org/archived_software/www.bootdisk.com/winfiles1/boot98se.exe
]
After you boot to a command line,
try:
 FDISK /mbr     <- warning, that's the part that could hurt.

That reinitializes the master boot record
on the primary partition in a way that 
Windows can recognize it.

But, it won't make WinXP automatically 
rebootable. I think you would have to
do a repair, using the original XP
install discs.

Safest way, is to leave it all alone,
go watch some tube, wait for the new
HD... then do an image copy to the new
drive and save your XP install.

-AI

Spinrite?  Poor selection for your problem.
I would recommend a three pronged approach:

#1) Run hdd regenerator
#2) Attempt a level 1 software recovery tool: r-tools (fat/ntfs) or getdataback
                         www.r-tt.com & www.getdataback.com 

#3) Without results from 1 or 2, attempt file tree building and
discovery with media-tools, a pro-grade recovery product.
                  www.data-recovery-software.com

Beyond that - you're looking at professional service fees.

Sorry - forgot three other notes:

Spinrite on any modern drive can take days to run (another reason it's
not a good idea).  Fdisk /mbr is possibly destructive
[scenario-based], my recommendations are not.  Hard Drive regenerator
is avail ($) at http://www.dposoft.net/

I will reiterate what drc said,
Fdisk /mbr can really mess things
up worse than they are. It should
only be used if you suspect the
main partition to be corrupted.
It will not fix anything beyond
the boot record.

For that matter any command or 
program that modifies the hard 
drive at file system level has 
great potential to harm your data.

-AI

Thanks for the answers all.  I'm not sure if the partition table is
the root cause of it; I took a look at it using fdisk / print and it
seems fine.  I'll attempt the recovery tools mentioned and keep you
updated.

datarecoverycenter-ga, Media Tools did it.  In case you are working
for ACR, I had to use an older version 4.22 since 5.00 and 4.31 both
crashed at bitmap.cpp(68) / bitmap.cpp(63) (can't remember which). 
Thank you.