Pls Help urgent: Partitions are NOT Detectected and Accessed on my XP/Linux PC

[swamyonline]

Hi ppl,

I have a x86 machine with 80GB HDD. I have already had WinXp and Fedora Core 3 on my machine.
I wanted to upgrade Fedora Core 3 to RHEL4. When I started upgrading with RHEL4 CD, it could not detect any partition (both NTFS and EXT3) which were there.
While installing RHEL4 I selected manual disk partitioning and it was saying ' no partitions found and if u continue u will loss all the data on ur disk. accidentally, I pressed yes to proceed. Now its not booting either from WindowsXP or from FC3.
When I tried to access those partitions using WindowXP Boot CD, its showing the complete 80 GB space. No NTFS partitions. I have 3 NTFS partitions on this disk which have very much important data.
How can I recover those NTFS partions? I did not format the disk and its as it is.

I think the partition table/MBR has gone bad. How can I recover partition table and those NTFS partitions.
I have lot many msgs regarding this on the net. I tried using FIXMBR and it gave the following msg:
//////////**************************////////

C:\FIXMBR
** CAUTION **
This computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid master boot recod.
FIXMBR may damage your partition tables if you proceed.
This could cause all the partitions on the current hard disk to become inaccessible.
If you are not having problems accessing your drive do not continue.
Are you sure you want to write a new MBR?

//////////**************************////////

I did not proceed from there onwards...I stopped there itself as I am not sure what will happen. I request you to pls guide me in this regard. should I use FIXMBR or any other tool to recover my partitions. I tried to access some executable recovery programs from a floppy but they are not executing.

Pls suggest me what exactly I have to do for this..

Thank you very much in advance.

swamy.

[adeydas]

While installing RHEL4 I selected manual disk partitioning and it was saying ' no partitions found and if u continue u will loss all the data on ur disk. accidentally, I pressed yes to proceed. Now its not booting either from WindowsXP or from FC3.

If that process ended, I believe you pretty much lost everything. If not, then you might try fdisk. Put in an old Win 98 or ME CD and run fdisk from it. Choose partition information and see what's left.

[swamyonline]

thank u boss for ur reply.. ofcourse, i am going to do that...but can't i do that from win xp cd? do u think, using fixmbr will not make the problem worse. i will try that but if u have any other solutions, pls tell me..

thank u...bye
swamy.

[rik]

Yes you can run FIXMBR from the cd using the Recovery Console. Could it make it worse? Honestly I don't know if it could be worse really. The partitions are already not seen.

[swamyonline]

Hi ppl,
Finally I got the solution with Active Partition Recovery 3.0 software. Thats a great tool. It can even recovery 3 or 4 times formatted partiotions or any sort of recovery. Its really great...I was able to recover all my NTFS partitions.. Anybody can rely on it... Have a good time...bye all

swamy.