Need Computer Help

[Reephdweller]

<p>I was burning a DVD the other night when my compy just shut down out of nowhere. After that my pc kept rebooting and no matter what options I chose at start up nothing would work, not last best configuration...not safe mode, not safe mode with command prompt, nothing would work. I finally got an error message about the cause being an unmountable boot volume error message. Turns out the boot.ini file got corrupted. <br /><br />I tried to create a boot disk to run the windows system recovery console though I couldn't do anything to launch it. A friend suggested I tried the command fixboot c: to rebuild the volume. Only it seems that after that that the whole drive and its seem to have gotten deleted. At least it appears that way to me. I have the Sony recovery cds so I can do a system restore to the original factory condition though my dilemma is that with the way I had the system setup I had made a partition out of the drive and on the other partition had all my music, my website files, photos etc. I was actually planning on moving or copying that stuff to an external hard drive that I have though this happened before I could do that. The Sony restore program says that if I run their restore it will wipe the whole drive out and any partitions and bring it back to factory condition. I don't want to do that just yet and risk losing whats on the other partition. I have an old copy of XP which I'm thinking of using to temporarily install XP so that I will have access to the other partition and then move that stuff to the external drive. After that I could then run the Sony system restore.</p><p>Does anyone know if this would work, or is the stuff on the second partition already gone because I ran that fixboot command? I would really like to save that stuff if possible. Any ideas or suggestions? Or if I should take it to a repair shop? I'd appreciate any help on this if possible.</p>

[cupcakelove]

I don't think fixboot overwrites the data on the drive, just the boot information.&nbsp; From what you've described, I think the easiest way to fix it is to create a boot disk with a boot.ini that points to where you installation of windows is.&nbsp; I used to do this stuff when I was in college, but its been a few years, so I could be completely wrong.<br />

[SatCam]

This happened to me a month ago. I think it was from a virus from chat...

I'm on Windows 2k. What I did was boot with the Windows install CD. It gave me the option to install or repair Windows. I chose to repair it, and it replaced all the system files. I didn't loose any data, and the registry was still intact, so the damage was minimal.

[OGC]

<strong>SatCam</strong> wrote:<br />This happened to me a month ago. I think it was from a virus from chat... I'm on Windows 2k. What I did was boot with the Windows install CD. It gave me the option to install or repair Windows. I chose to repair it, and it replaced all the system files. I didn't loose any data, and the registry was still intact, so the damage was minimal. <p>Ain't it great when thing work out ? It's so rare .</p>

[Reephdweller]

<p>I don't think fixboot overwrites the data on the drive, just the boot information.&nbsp; From what you've described, I think the easiest way to fix it is to create a boot disk with a boot.ini that points to where you installation of windows is.&nbsp;</p><p>Thanks, my concern is that my computers system is XP Media Center Edition, and my laptop uses XP Home edition. If I try and create a boot disk with XP Home will the files from that boot disk be okay for XP Media Center? Sorry if that sounds stupid but I'm a little paranoid right now about losing those files. </p>

[JoeYaDeadHomey]

the home bootdisc wont work on media center. go to the microsoft site and search the database for media center boot disc. make it off your notebook, good luck.<br />