How to Recovery Lost Partition When Windows XP is Unable to Boot

Partitioning in computer systems refers to dividing of the storage space of hard disk into various logical drives referred to as partitions. By partitioning your system, you can ensure that the system files and the program files are well separated by data files. Also, with the system drive separated from other partitions there is enough space for the operating system to perform virtual memory paging and swapping.

In addition, if one of the partitions gets corrupted then other partitions do not get affected by this. And a partition can get affected (or corrupted) because of several reasons such as virus infections, power outages, abrupt system shutdown, missing system files, etc. In such cases, you should take appropriate corrective measures to resolve this issue. However, if you are unable to do so, then you should use a third-party partition recovery software to recover partition.

Consider a scenario wherein you are unable to boot your Windows XP-based system. Either of the following error message is displayed :
  • Operating system not found
  • Missing Operating System
In addition, when you start your system from Recovery Console you are unable to do so. An error message is displayed, that is :
  • Setup did not find any hard drives installed on your computer."
Cause:
For the aforementioned error messages, there could be following reasons :
  • The disk is not detected by the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System)
  • The hard disk is damaged.
  • Sector 0 of the physical hard disk has a corrupt Master Boot Record (MBR).
  • An incompatible partition is marked as Active.
  • The system drive partition containing the MBR is not active any more.
To resolve this issue and to access the system, you can use either of the following methods :

  • Verify the BIOS settings :
In this, you should verify the BIOS settings and verify whether the hard disk is recognized by the system or not. If yes, then restart the system to confirm whether the issue is resolved or not. If the issue is not resolved or if BIOS is unable to detect the hard disk, then the problem is hardware related.

Use Recovery Console :
Access the Windows XP Recovery Console and use fixmbr command to repair the master boot record of the system drive partition.

However, if you are still not able to resolve the issue then you should use a third-party partition recovery software to recover Windows partition. These tools are read-only in nature and do not overwrite the original data while scanning the damaged area.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a Windows partition recovery software that enables you to perform partition recovery of lost, deleted, and missing partitions. In addition, it is able to recover more than 185 different types of files from various storage media such as hard drives, pen drives, iPods, external HDDs, etc. This partition recovery tool is able to recover deleted emails from MS Outlook and Outlook Express. It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.
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