Ultimate Boot CD

Hello,

I'm no idiot when it comes to computers, but it seems every problem I get over the years gets more difficult, and I've finally conceded defeat as this is something I just cannot figure out.

I'm sure it's simple, but I just can't get my head around it.

Fiancees laptop HDD suddenly switched off yesterday. It never crashed, never had a single problem. Switched it back on, and it went through an XP Blue screen boot loop.

Using Ultimate boot CD, I booted with FreeDOS and hoped I could at least just copy a few documents to a flash drive. ASPIUSB just wouldn't work. I'd get an OpCode error everytime.

Then, in restarting one time, suddenly I get a "Error loading Operating System" message.

Researching, I figured it to be a partition problem. In FreeDOS I couldn't access C drive anymore (whereas I could before the Error loading OS prob). I used Partition Table Doctor and repaired the partition and the MBR.

Now, when I boot using FreeDOS, I bring up Ranish Partition Manager... this;


This just don't look right to me. That 2nd line contains an unused partition between the MBR and the main partition. And it saying "this is unsupported file system" under the main partition isn't great I'm sure either.

So, I humbly beg... I really, really, really need to access this drive, and copy literally 10 MB of Docs to a Flash Drive. It's 4 years of my fiancee's Uni work (current too) and yes, no backup. (She normally keeps a copy on her flash, but friend needed to borrow flash just a day before)

Update: Using Ranish, I tried to modify the properties on the main partition, to start at Cyl: 0, Head: 0, Sect: 2.

Saved, rebooted, and now I see on booting in FreeDOS "No NTFS drives recognised - exiting" when I try NTFS support.

Using Partition Table Doctor fixes the partition (apparently) but then I'm back to end of 1st post again with the unused partition and not being able to access C: in FreeDOS.

If your trying to recover you data before doing an further changes, try booting to Parted Magic with a USB drive inserted while booting.. Get your data off before any changes are made if at all possible.

After you get the data off you can try testdisk to restore the partition information. If you have further problems, use the hard drive manufacturers' diagnostic utility which are included on the CD.