Hi all
I have a user with a Dell Optiplex desktop on Windows XP. He was complaining about poor performance lately, so after doing the usual steps of cleaning up temp folders and general junk, I attempted a defrag and chkdsk. Neither would run, with the chkdsk returning an error about "the type of the filesystem is raw".
I did some investigation into this and was advised to run TestDisk to recover the filesystem and restore it to what it was. I did this, but upon rebooting, the computer went straight to the Dell Diagnostics software, which I believe exists on a small partition on the hard drive. If you cancel out of this, reboot, or try anything else, it simply returns straight to the Diagnostics screen again without ever attempting to boot into Windows.
I then inserted an XP CD, went to the recovery console and ran DISKPART to display the current partitions. They are listed as below :
c: Partition 1 [FAT] 55 mb (46mb free)
Unpartitioned space 76238 mb
I assume that the partitions have thus been screwed up during the Testdisk process, and my previous windows installation (and user data & files) is on the large unpartitioned space.
There is a lot of data on this computer which I would prefer NOT to lose, so I don't want to just format it. Is there any way I can restore that 76328mb back to the way it was, when it existed as the c: drive?
Thanks
I have a user with a Dell Optiplex desktop on Windows XP. He was complaining about poor performance lately, so after doing the usual steps of cleaning up temp folders and general junk, I attempted a defrag and chkdsk. Neither would run, with the chkdsk returning an error about "the type of the filesystem is raw".
I did some investigation into this and was advised to run TestDisk to recover the filesystem and restore it to what it was. I did this, but upon rebooting, the computer went straight to the Dell Diagnostics software, which I believe exists on a small partition on the hard drive. If you cancel out of this, reboot, or try anything else, it simply returns straight to the Diagnostics screen again without ever attempting to boot into Windows.
I then inserted an XP CD, went to the recovery console and ran DISKPART to display the current partitions. They are listed as below :
c: Partition 1 [FAT] 55 mb (46mb free)
Unpartitioned space 76238 mb
I assume that the partitions have thus been screwed up during the Testdisk process, and my previous windows installation (and user data & files) is on the large unpartitioned space.
There is a lot of data on this computer which I would prefer NOT to lose, so I don't want to just format it. Is there any way I can restore that 76328mb back to the way it was, when it existed as the c: drive?
Thanks