PLEASE Help!! I lost my partitions

[darrell]

Well, I tried putting my old config.sys, autoexec.bat and other files back on from a backup I made last week but I had no luck. Does ANYONE know how I might could fix this? It may be too late cause I went into DOS and tried to find the drives, but they were not there either. I also went into Fdisk to look at my partitions, but it only showed the C:\ drive as the primary partition and it had the extended DOS partition, but didnt show either D:\ or E:\. It only showed that missing space as the extended DOS partition without any logical DOS drives associated to them. IS it too late? Did I lose all the data on those drives? Please someone help me if you know of any ideas to try. I will try almost anything to get it back.

darrell

PS- What about one of those utilities that are "supposed" recover lost data. Could I try one of those? What about if I reformatted those partitions and then tried doing that?

[darrell]

All I did was install Norton Antivirus 5.0 and rebooted and now I dont have my partitions. All I have is my C:\ drive and it still shows the same size it had before. I have a lot of stuff on them and dont want to reformat if possible. Any help is greatly appreciated. I am running Windows 98 and its a Maxtor 13GB hard drive.

Thanks in adavance for any help. It is greatly appriciated.

[BBA]

A person at work told me NAV 5 has a hard time with large partitions. I guess he was right.

What exactly does it do?

[darrell]

nothing really. I mean, it installed and then I rebooted and came back in and now they are not there. One thing though, once it got back into Windows and started the first initial scan, a box popped up after it scanned the memory and then it was gone before I could read it. Its a 13GB maxtor Drive and I had it broke down into C:\ (1.5GB), D:\ (2GB), and E:\(9.5GB}. I have uninstalled it and that didnt work.


darrell

[darrell]

Well I would just like to thank everyone for the help. Glad everyone jumped in and put in their info. It really helped out a lot.- in a sarcastic tone.

Well, without any help from here, I was able to fix my problem. its amazing what you can learn in a day if you really need to. I just hope no one else runs into this problem cause you sure wont get any help from here. It was an easy solution and I got back about 85% of my lost data which is better than nothing. the solution was so easy there should definitely be quite a few people on this board who know how to do it. I just hope you guys can help out the next person who has this problem cause Im not pitching in any advice anymore.

good luck

darrell

[CMonster]

Darrell,

...a little patients please? I see that you waited 4 hours and 55 minutes for a response before loosing your cool - and that the wee hours of the morning for many of us.

I swore that I would never use this as a response to anyone's question, especially considering the help responses I received while first learning Linux OS, but in your case it seems to fit:

RTFM

Now, speaking from personal experience, I have never encountered this problem with NAV before, but I have seen (and had) NUMEROUS problems with Norton/Symantec products and that is why I stay away from them. I do not recommned them to anyone. I know that thousands use them and swear by them but I can live without the headaches and system slow-down.

BTW, If you ever want to uninstall a Norton Utility or NAV, I strongly recommend that you do it in safe mode.

One more thing, it might be a good idea if you shared your findings with the other members here so that those who have not experienced a similar problem may learn something.



[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 09-21-99).]

[darrell]

guess I was a little ticked. I was working on this for about 16 hours before I came back and made that last post. Just lost my cool I guess.

Anyway, if anyone else runs into this problem, I would suggest using some type of "disk Doctor" program. After spending hours in DOS trying to recover the partitions, I went and searched the net and found a program called "tiramisu" that will recover lost data. Sorry I lost the addy for it. But it wasnt much help anyway. I tried installing Norton Utilities 4.0 that I had gotten free with my hard drive and used the "Disk Doctor" and it gave me back about 85% of what I lost. Which is better than nothing. But it didnt give me all my hard drive space. Least it gave me back most of what I lost so I could back it up and then reformat my hard drive to get the missing space back. So, all in all I guess norton came thru. Its been a painful but learning experience. Now I atleast know one more thing I didnt know how to do before yesterday. If anyone runs into this problem, I would suggest giving Norton Utilities a try.

darrell