Please help fix the damage I have done to my computer

Please help fix the damage I have done to my computer

Slightly embarassing, but can anyone help.

Used to dual boot XP and Vista, but vista is fine so I deleted XP and merged the drives.

Unfortunately, XP was on the primary drive and vista on a logical, and rather than making the new drive primary, I now have no primary drive at all and it won't start.

Vista rescue disk can't fix it.

Any ideas? Can I get away without reinstalling?

put the vista disc in and set the cd/dvd to read first then make a new partition and install vista on it

same instructions for xp

if you dont need +4 gig of ram i would stick with xp

hhmmm..... very tricky. as they both work in 2 seperate ways i'm not sure what you can do, if owt.

look for a dos partition manager, there maybe one on the Ultimate Boot CD but to be honest - i wouldn't be hopefully.

I'm trying to install vista now - it can find both partitions, 1 is extended and the other is logical. I need to keep the data on the logical.

I tried to reformat the extended using the installation, but that didn't help. So then I deleted it, and Vista cannot make a new partition in the unused space (error 0x8004240f).

Do i need a new hard drive to install an OS on, or is there some other programme I can use to make the space a primary partition?

use a proper partition manager - but i dont know if it will allow u to

They don't - went through the UBCD ones, and none of them can touch it because theres no boot sector. Used the boot sector thing but that won't work either.

Looks like I need a new hard disk.

try this first -

http://icrontic.com/articles/repair_windows_xp

what does that ultimate boot cd do ?

click the link and find out

You may have to load up in MS-Dos mode (if the basis still runs on that system). You may have to wipe both drives through start-up and then re-install. Ive had a mac for 4 years so i dont no how to do it anymore, or if you can even do that anymore.

it's installed on the logical drive , which is controlled by the primary partition - that he killed.

proper fuck up

UBCD is a combination of many things..partition managers, diagnostic tools...a great addition to any geeks toolkit.

I don't think you've been able to actually select to boot into "MS-DOS mode" since Windows 95 when it was an actual restart option

The last time I did that was to install Duke Nukem 3D

This much is now clear.

The problem is that the drive contains a lot of stuff I am desperate not to lose so I can't just blast it and start again

Cheers all for your help but looks like new disk time. Needed one anway

yeah, dont make it any worse, clean build on a different hard disk

noobs eh.