A Tricky One .. Please Help..!

[deathpena1ty]

Hi,

I am relatively new to these forums, I am a regular user of the UNIX Distro Backtrack 4.
I use it enough to know my way around it smoothly, but this one stumps me!

I was wondering if somebody on here could help me with my Partition Table. I was trying to re-arrange it and make it neater and cleaner.

But, somehow Partition Magic in Vista told me it was all messed up and wanted to know if I wanted that fixed. So as an eager little beaver, who wasn't thinking I hit the "Sure why not" button. =/
Bad mistake.
at first Windows wouldn't boot, it recognized my custom boot screen then hit a blue screen and cycled. Come to find out my Partition table got screwed up even more so i fixed it from having two boot flag's and dup.li' Entry's along with writing a new MBR & fixing the MFT down to this.

> Fdisk -ul

root_bt:~# fdisk -ul

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              63      144584       72261    6  FAT16
/dev/sda2          145408    21116927    10485760    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *    21116928   385479674   182181373+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 2086 MB, 2086666240 bytes
2 heads, 63 sectors/track, 32345 cylinders, total 4075520 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x007a8367

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          63     2097269     1048603+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb2         2097270     4075469      989100   83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe8900690

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1

root_bt:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           9       72261    6  FAT16
/dev/sda2              10        1315    10485760    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *        1315       23995   182181373+   7  HPFS/NTFS

My main Disk is sda, Sda1 is my Dell Utility or Dell Media Direct Fat32. My Sda2 is my Dell Recovery Drive NTFS. & my sda3 is my main OS drive. Which windows wont recognize in any recovery setup.

As far as i Can see my Main problem is that sda2 end's on 1315 cylinder and sda3 is set to start on cylinder 1315.
I was wondering if my problem's bigger than this, or if it's just as simple as changing that value with sfdisk or testdisk.

I've tryed testdisk and that wont do any thing, and sfdisk is to complicated for me to just start throwing value's in there.

ANY Help is sooooo Much appreciated.
I'll give you any print out you need.
PLEASE HELP ME, up for two days trying to fix this.
& I'm STUCK!

p.s here's two more sfdisk print out's showing other problem's I've come across.

root_bt:~# sfdisk -uS /dev/sda --f
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
BLKRRPART: Device or resource busy

This disk is currently in use - repartitioning is probably a bad idea.
Umount all file systems, and swapoff all swap partitions on this disk.
Use the --no-reread flag to suppress this check.

Disk /dev/sda: 24321 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/sda1            63    144584     144522   6  FAT16
/dev/sda2        145408  21116927   20971520   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *  21116928 385479674  364362747   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4             0         -          0   0  Empty
Input in the following format; absent fields get a default value.
<start> <size> <type [E,S,L,X,hex]> <bootable [-,*]> <c,h,s> <c,h,s>
Usually you only need to specify <start> and <size> (and perhaps <type>).

/dev/sda1 :

&

root_bt:~# sfdisk -uS /dev/sda1 --f
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
BLKRRPART: Invalid argument
OK

Disk /dev/sda1: 8 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/sda1p1      30195395 1796312749 1766117355  cd  Unknown
                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (0,190,62)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (257,19,50)
partition ends on cylinder 257, beyond the end of the disk
/dev/sda1p2   ? 544165376 2228272491 1684107116  72  Unknown
                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (101,107,32)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (370,114,47)
partition ends on cylinder 370, beyond the end of the disk
/dev/sda1p3   ? 1109413705 1109433745      20041  45  Unknown
                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (68,114,0)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (322,76,12)
partition ends on cylinder 322, beyond the end of the disk
/dev/sda1p4             0         -          0   0  Empty
Input in the following format; absent fields get a default value.
<start> <size> <type [E,S,L,X,hex]> <bootable [-,*]> <c,h,s> <c,h,s>
Usually you only need to specify <start> and <size> (and perhaps <type>).

/dev/sda1p1 :

root_bt:~# sfdisk -uS /dev/sda2 --f
Checking that no-one is using this disk right now ...
BLKRRPART: Invalid argument
OK

Disk /dev/sda2: 1305 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Old situation:
Units = sectors of 512 bytes, counting from 0

   Device Boot    Start       End   #sectors  Id  System
/dev/sda2p1   ?   6579571 1924427647 1917848077  70  DiskSecure Multi-Boot
                start: (c,h,s) expected (409,142,41) found (365,99,47)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (371,114,37)
/dev/sda2p2   ? 1953251627 3771827541 1818575915  43  Unknown
                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (288,115,51)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (364,116,50)
/dev/sda2p3   ? 225735265 225735274         10  72  Unknown
                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (288,116,47)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (372,101,51)
/dev/sda2p4     2642411520 2642463409      51890   0  Empty
                start: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (0,0,0)
                end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (0,0,0)
Input in the following format; absent fields get a default value.
<start> <size> <type [E,S,L,X,hex]> <bootable [-,*]> <c,h,s> <c,h,s>
Usually you only need to specify <start> and <size> (and perhaps <type>).

/dev/sda2p1 :

It's Pretty much the same for Sda3 as well.

Please someone. I really need this drive back. It has so many custom setup's on it.

[deathpena1ty]

No taker's. Any help is appreciated.

[jayd512]

Welcome to LinuxForums!

Do you use the Windows boot loader, or Grub?

If Grub, then post your /boot/grub/menu.lst. If Grub2, it would be /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
I'm not versed on Grub2 at this point, but either way, post back with the results and we should be able to help.

[deathpena1ty]

Hello thank you for replying ..
I have Windows Boot Loader.
Not sure how to print that config, I use a copy of Backtrack 4 on a Persistent USB.

But on sda uses windows boot loader.
any thing else i could post.?

[Lostfarmer]

Are any of the hdd's set up as a Raid ? '"Raid" likely spelled wrong"'

If they are, you do not want my help.

If they are not post output from 'dd' for the MBR and each VBR 'first sector of partition' . You will need to convert the HEX data to text to post. Can try to use 'xxd' or 'hexdump' ,do not know if they are on your linux version. Post outputs from 1 hdd only for now.

[deathpena1ty]

Is this the right dd MBR code you were looking for.?
And the right Hex. ID?

mbr.bin: x86 boot sector; partition 1: ID=0x6(FAT16), starthead 1, startsector 63, 144522 sectors; partition 2: ID=0x7 (HPFS/NTFS), starthead 13, startsector 145408, 20971520 sectors; partition 3: ID=0x7 (HPFS/NTFS), active, starthead 254, startsector 21116928, 364362747 sectors

I'm not sure what the code for the VBR is., if my drive is " dd if=/dev/sda " ..?
sorry. Google Failed me.

[deathpena1ty]

Oh and it's Not Raid by the way. forgot to mention that.

[Lostfarmer]

My be should find out your exact problems.
1) can you read the data on each partition when booted into you linux ?
if not post errors.

2)use 'testdisk' -select 'advanced option' {about the 3rd window}- hi-light each partition in turn and press enter--does it say the -boot record code is good ? (the exact wording may be wrong).

3) are you duel booting or is it a Vista only setup ?

4)My guess at this point- when you re-arranged the MPT (Master Partition Table) on sda it moved the OS partition from sda1 to sda3 slot. If so you have 2 options: (IF and only IF # 1&2 are good above)
1)run Vistas boot loader repair option
2) manually edit MPT back to the way it was.
the MPT likely had
sda1=Vista
sda2=Dell Utility
sda3= Dell [COLOR=blue ! important][COLOR=blue ! important]Recovery[/COLOR][/COLOR]
Drive
3){I do not use Vista} If it was XP ,edit boot.ini to point to first partition, if possible and how on Vista (?).

Would not be to concerned about output from 'sfdisk -uS' it guessed the geometry wrong. 'My guess'

As far as i Can see my Main problem is that sda2 end's on 1315 cylinder and sda3 is set to start on cylinder 1315

that is normal when looking at the block output option '-l' , it would be bad with '-ul' option. One block = 2 sectors.

[deathpena1ty]

Yes in testdisk all the boot records are good. Well they say Ok if thats still good.
Heres one thing i left out sorry, My drive is a 200 Gig Seagate. I'm pretty sure its clicking.
And When running Partition Magic in Vista it Labeled my OS C: Drive "BAD" this has happened before it's fixable with a clean install but I just don't wanna go that far. Very Sad.!

Umm and I am unable to any longer boot into Vista it Load's my BIOS then Cycle boot's right after the screen goes Black after loading the BIOS.
& I'm straight up have Vista on this Drive cause I know this drive has problems.
For some Reason in Vista Recovery Option's When i go To boot into it, It wont Recognize Vista as a Valid OS on the drive. But i can still see all my File's Cause it's mounted to Sda3 .. God Bless Linux.

[deathpena1ty]

Update*
Fixed the MBR, MFT & the partition table i think i cant figure out how to get
C: partition 3 to be the first partition. Not sure..?

What i did was ..
From the Vista Recovery Disk (Command Prompt)

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
/boot/botsect.exe /nt60 all /force
C:/Windows/Sys32 > del C:/boot/bcd
Bootrec /rebuildbcd

Then ran a
chkdsk C: /f
That Fixed a few Thing's.

Did the Auto-Mated Startup Repair>
Like 6 Times to try & fix everything.

It boot's in doesn't have my old bootscreen active though, But when it gets to where the login screen should be and the Background is Black & I can also see the Mouse pointer but i cant do anything including Ctrl-Alt-Del ..

Ne thoughts..? It's gotten So close from the Start> Ty. to Everyone. Mainly Lostfarmer.

p.s> I do think its the Partition order, because when i booted the first couple of times it automatically came up with "Windows is going to check Drive F: then it Did G:, for constituency", Those are my Dell Utility & Recovery Drives. Which are Partitioned First. =/ For some reason..