Question

"Invalid partition table" error when booting Windows XP.

Asked by: radiohed

I need some help diagnosing and fixing an "Invalid partition table" error when I try to boot my PC.

My troubles started last night when I tried to upgrade my Ubuntu installation to the latest version. I had Ubuntu running on a separate hard drive from my Windows XP installaton, so during the installation I had Ubuntu delete the partitions on the drive. The installation completed successfully, but it all went pear-shaped when I tried to reboot. Seems as though Grub messed up the drive mappings, and I was unable to boot into either Ubuntu or Windows from the Grub startup menu.

I messed around with the Grub config for a bit, but I couldn't get it going. So I decided to remove the Ubuntu drive from my PC, and then use the Windows recovery console to try and restore the normal Windows boot loader on the drive containing my Windows installation.

No luck. Nothing I tried would work. I've tried restoring ntldr and ntdetect.com from the CD. I've run fixboot and fixmbr with a number of different drive letters/partitions specified, and I've edited the boot.ini to change the partition I think Windows should be booting from.

Typing 'map' in the recovery console, gives me the following information:

C: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
H: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition2
D: \Device\Harddisk0\Partition3

C: is a small 56MB FAT16 partition which fdisk reports is the ACTIVE partition. Don't ask me why I have this... I've no idea. H: is an NTFS partition on which Windows is installed and contains ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini. D: contains all my data.

My boot.ini file looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

I've tried specifiying Partition 1 and 2 as the default, but neither of those worked.

Anyone have any idea how I could fix this? Thanks in advance!

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Asked On
2007-04-25 at 03:20:17ID22532698
Tags

partition

,

invalid

,

table

Topics

Disk Partition Tools

,

Windows XP Operating System

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: rindiPosted on 2007-04-25 at 03:31:40ID: 18972340

Have you tried changing the active partition to be the one windows is on? is that a primary partition?

 

by: radiohedPosted on 2007-04-25 at 03:34:30ID: 18972352

Hi rindi,

Yes, I tried, but I couldn't change it... Fdisk wouldn't let me. That's possibly because it's not a primary partition. On the first small one (C:) is a primary partition.

 

by: rindiPosted on 2007-04-25 at 03:50:22ID: 18972400

Try copying the boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntldr files from the windows partition to the small partition. You should be able to do that via the Ubuntu CD, or by using some other OS that loads from CD and can read ntfs partitions.

 

by: radiohedPosted on 2007-04-25 at 04:07:02ID: 18972463

rindi,

I might give that a try, but what you've said has given me another idea. I'd appreciate your input on this. As all my data is on partition3, I was thinking that I should just delete partitions 1 and 2, and create a new primary partition in the free space, which would presumably become the new active partition. I could then just reinstall Windows, which I wouldn't particularly mind doing.

Your solution might work, but this small primary partition is bugging me a little bit... I'd like to get rid of it.

 

by: rindiPosted on 2007-04-25 at 04:16:23ID: 18972500

The small partition is probably the boot partition grub made. Deleting the other partitions and reinstalling windows should work, just make sure you install to a primary partition.

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