Hi
Hi trying to fix my father in laws pc. He some how managed to corupt the Master Boot Record of his Windows ME partition, which has a lot of work on which he doesn't want to loose. I have tried to replace the mbr with fdisk/mbr command to no avail. I have also tried to fix it with bootmagic and partition magic but this hasn't worked either. Under partition magic the partition is listed as 'type 44 hex' when it should be fat 32. I have now got to the stage of thinking that I'm not going to fix it, but would like to be able to get into the partition to retrive the data before I repartition the hdd and format it. Everything I've tried will not enable me to do this as it isn't recongonised by any OS and isn't even assigned a drive letter.
Can anybody please help in either suggesting a way to fix the partition or recommending some software that will enable me to get into the partition and retriving his valuable data?

You will have my undying thanks as I'm pulling my hair out!!!
Terry

I think it may be impossible, when a drive's MBR is corrupted like that. If no OS can read it you are in trouble, sorry man, I know the feeling. A search for some data recovery tool could be an option.

What you can do (if you're allowed to) is take out the drive and put in another pc as slave. just boot your own windows from your harddrive and you will be able to access his data. I did it before with a friend's computer.
Good luck, i know how annoying it can be to loose valuable data.

But he says no OS will recognize the drive and assign it a drive letter. I was thinking what you replied, but from what he says it seems impossible.

I know this is a long shot, but what about an alternative OS, such as Linux? If it did recognize the HDD and mount the disk, you might be able to pull the files he needs.
Also, have you considered scanning the drive with a bootable Virus scanning diskette? I haven't seen a virus do this specifically, but it could happen.

you can attempt to fix the master Boot Record by using FDISK like this:

X:\> fdisk /mbr


<EDIT>Sorry, didn't totally read your first post.</EDIT>

Wow, sounds like his harddrives in a bit've grief.
I think that francly you've lost your data.
Only alternative is, as PMISTRY mentioned, data recovery software, the is a free piece of software called 'Advanced Data Recovery', I can't remember who makes it, do a search on tucows or on the net.
Another option may be to run ghost and compress the harddrive into an image file, then expand the image file to a CD so you can read it off that?

Daniel

You said the "windows ME" partition...does he have any other OS installed besides that?