I have run XP Pro SP2 NTFS on my PC for some time now without issues. Last week there was a power cut and XP will no longer boot, it goes around in a loop after windows loading screen and reboots. I have tried 3rd party disk analysers that show an active NTFS partition and shows no errors on scan. I can also see a valid directory structure. However I still cannot boot into XP. If I load the repair console from the XP setup disk it shows the partition with (Unknown after it andno mention of the NTFS file system. If I run fixboot it thinks it is FAT and informs me that it is unable to repair the boot sector. Any thought would be most welcome Regards Nick
If you can access the drive on another system backup any important data and then reformat again, which should fix the problem or try this first http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx
XP enables write caching by default...as it should, it make the system much faster performance wise. problem, power outage. it causes the file system to crash...not saying for sure this is your issue, just adding to the discussion. I have had alot of trouble recovering the files on a partition that has been corrupted by this, there are few programs that work ok, but are not free, actually quite expensive. the free trial versions and freeware versions usually dont do it. as for using the hard drive again i packet write/secure erase/zero write(all mean the same thing but fully erase everything (good zero write takes hours, but worth the effort)then repartition and install.
