Recovery Consle Issues

[dom21]

Hope you can help,
My original problem was when my laptop boots up, i get a message saying no operating system present, or words to that effect.

Please see my previous thread https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic23931.html

When inserting a Win XP cd, I can get to the recovery console, if I try to repair XP I get message saying access denied!?

If I try to re install XP Iam greeted with two partitions,

E: Partition1 <Inactive <OS/2 Boot Man 2000MB <1066MB free
C: Partition2 [Unknown] 26616MB <26615MB free

Whats is the e: partition?
Why is c: Partition unknown?

I only have the option to format the C: Partition in either NTFS or FAT32 format.

I would like to avoid losing any personal docs if possible.

Also I can boot from the packard bell recovery disk, which will recover windows, but also delete my personal programs and documents.

Which should I use??

Many thanks

Dom

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Take the laptop-HD out. Get a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter. Put that HD in a desktop-PC as Slave. Retrieve whatever data you can onto that PC's harddisk.
Then put the HD back in the laptop and let the restore-option from Packard Bell do its work. Also try to get any drivers off it that you can find in either partition.
Alternatively, buy a legit OEM XP Home or Pro on the web for about $85.-
Fdisk your laptop's HD, remove all old partitions, then make it 1 new partition for the whole disk, set it active and install your new XP, booting from CD. Let XP format the HD in NTFS, then install the rest.