How can I rebuild/repair the partition table?

Here's the full history of how things played out.

I was analysing my system logs using Event Viewer in Windows XP x64.  I noticed some .sys drivers weren't starting due to incompatibility.  So I researched and discovered they had a corresponding registry entry (something like HKLM>System>CurrentControlSet>Services>_nameofdriverorservicehere_).

I pruned the offending entries out (they were all drivers which were not in need of a compatible replacement instead), and then decided to check out what was in that same area of the registry.  To my horror there were entries for programs and drivers that were either no longer installed or in the drivers case (A Silicon Image SATA RAID controller) the controller was disabled (effectively removed from the system, since the disabler was in the BIOS not the device manager).  I proceeded to prune (conservatively I thought) all entries which were redundant (noting them down in a text file, and for those which belonged to the base windows install I even backed up the keys to separate .reg files).

Despite putting what I believed was a good amount of consideration into the entries I did remove, lo and behold when I rebooted I got the old Bluescreen of death with a 7B error (inaccessible hard disk - which is nonsense as none of the entries save for the silicon image driver were even remotely related to the disk, controller or filesystem).  I pondered on the logic of this error, and then grabbed my windows disc - I booted into the recovery console and tried a fixmbr fixboot and chkdsk (I don't remember the order, but at a guess I'd say chkdsk first, then fixmbr then fixboot).  Well after rebooting things had gone from bad to worse, since I wasn't even getting as far as a BSOD now - I was in the pre-boot screen with a generic error code pertaining to the inability to boot the disc.

I removed the disk from the computer and connected it via a SATA>USB adapter to my laptop.  I found I couldn't access the contents of the hard drive (chkdsk said it was NTFS but unknown version or something to that effect, which meant it couldn't even scan it for errors).

So I put it back into the desktop computer and went digging on my laptop for some fixes.  I got hold of a software title called Partition Table Doctor.  It comes with a windows program and a bootable iso file so I burned that and booted it on the desktop computer.  It found the hard disk, and moaned about the drive parameters being incorrect (it suggest I toggle a setting between CHS, LBA, Auto etc), then told me it could fix the partition.  I permitted it to do so and it "appeared" to have fixed it, it showed an NTFS partition marked active on screen - but when I rebooted (yes it did save the modifications), the problem remained.

The drive is a Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA-II.

Ideally I would like to repair the drive, since it's a fully healthy drive (physically and S.M.A.R.T'ly speaking).

If we exhaust this option then a complete recovery of the contents onto another drive (I have another drive here) would be almost as good (but in the short term much more of a hassle).

Thinking about the events as outlined, it would seem that there's a compatibility issue here that caused fixmbr to fudge things worse (possibly due to information it relied upon being wrong)and also prevents Partition Table Doctor from repairing.  The latter part of the BIOS boot up screen says the drive is running in CHS mode which I thought wasn't right but in the BIOS it's just on AUTO (CHS isn't even an option, it's AUTO or Large).

Nothing like an adventure eh?

-cc


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