Partitions, GRUB & Windows

[xiar]

OK story time-

Dell Inspiron e1505, Core2, 1GB RAM, etc.

80GB SATA disk:
/dev/sda1 1 6 48163+ 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 * 7 7333 58853170+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 8608 8632 200812+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 8633 9729 8811652+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 8633 9729 8811621 8e Linux LVM


I have Vista on sda2 and Fedora Core on sda3-sda5. In sectors 7334-8608 there is unpartitioned space that I was planning to install another OS on. Vista used to expand all the way to 8607, but I used a tool called Partition Logic to resize the partition. It said it was compatible with Vista, but I'm beginning to think it was a mistake.

It took about 10 hours to finish the resize, it said it was successful. Then I rebooted and selected the Windows item from the GRUB list (I had already set it up to boot from hd0,1 and it was working) but it gave me:

Error 13: Invalid Executable........

So here I am in Fedora writing this, wondering if I screwed up my Vista install beyond repairing. Or is there hope to somehow reinitialize it or something? Any ideas?

Thanks!

[devils casper]

Is above output of fdisk -l command latest?
Execute fdisk -l command again and post output here. Post the contents of /boot/grub/grub.conf file too.

[xiar]

fdisk -l

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           6       48163+   6  FAT16
/dev/sda2   *           7        7333    58853170+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            8608        8632      200812+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4            8633        9729     8811652+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5            8633        9729     8811621   8e  Linux LVM

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
#          root (hd0,2)
#          kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
#          initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=3
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-49.fc8)
	root (hd0,2)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-49.fc8 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-49.fc8.img
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-42.fc8)
	root (hd0,2)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img
title Hardware Diagnostics
	rootnoverify (hd0,0)
	chainloader +1
title Windows
	rootnoverify (hd0,1)
	makeactive
	chainloader +1

[xiar]

Well...........I'm pretty sure I'm screwed....yeah....pretty much.....

I've tried like 13 different partition recovery programs, chkdisk, programs that say they will repair the partition table, programs that say they'll read from a damaged NTFS partition. All of them give a similar message: "Error reading sector 0, BOOT sector is invalid."

So I think i'm just going to forget it and reformat...crap....

[Lostfarmer]

If you have not yet formated , give TESTDISK a try. The program is on some live linux cd's. There is also a DOS version.

[devils casper]

I agree with Lostfarmer. Code is correct in grub.conf file. Try testdisk to recover earlier partition structure.