FAT32 "unknown file system" error

[AmazonSister]

Hello, and I will SO appriciate anyone who's willing to take the time to read about my troubles... I am exausted... (by the way, I type like *@$^%, so please excuse any errors , but I need help. (ouch. That hurts~but here goes) You see....

My 2nd hard drive has suddenly become inaccesable. It is a FAT32 formatted drive (Maxtor 6E040L0 (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133) and has had no problems of any kind until now. I had not changed or added any hardware imm. prior to the first time this occured. I hadn't changed any drivers. I had probably added new programs (I do this, well... LOTS! tweak, tweak I am getting these error messages: "unknown file system", incorrect parameter" & "not a recognized file system" and after a month of trying everything I know for this drive (G:\). I've come to the end of my rope.

Just to cover what didn't work... i've searched the "Help & Support" Ran all tests, ran Norton Sys (installed, V. 2003), ran online and offline virus, hackerware, ad-ware, worm & trogen... checkers. I have "googled" by every combo I can think of (I did find a few complicated scripts, but i've been out of touch for too damn long and don't want to mess up even worse), i'm not ready to risk trying... I've searched the knowladge bases, etc... and read "everyone's", no, really.. most of them anyway... facts, tweaks, tips, help, Tshooters, and Freq. ?'s, etc... By the way, in case it's not obvious, i'm a hard-Headed-I'll-figure-it-out-,yself stubborn wench, but all fixes mean loosing all my data & mp3's (AAHHHHH!)

I'm finally ready to humbly ask for help now that my SMART is predicting failure on my Boot Drive (NFTS dual partition running XP home, Maxtor 4R060J0 (60 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133).


Frustrated & behind the times

and THANX for taking the time...



System Properties: System Properties:
Manufacturer HP Pavilion 05
Product P9850A-ABA 513n
Version 3001211RE101GLEND
Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Celeron 4, 1800 MHz
Motherboard Name TriGem Glendale
Motherboard Chipset Intel Brookdale-G i845G
System Memory 246 MB
BIOS Type Phoenix (10/29/02)
Motherboard Properties:
Manufacturer Intel Corporation
Product NBGV - Northwood/Brookdale-G Validation Board
BIOS Properties:
Vendor Phoenix Technologies LTD
Version 6.00
Release Date 10/29/2002
Size 512 KB
Boot Devices Floppy Disk, Hard Disk
Capabilities Flash BIOS, Shadow BIOS, BBS, Smart Battery
Supported Standards DMI, APM, ESCD, PnP
Expansion Capabilities ISA, PCI, PCMCIA, USB
Storage:
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive Maxtor 4R060J0 (60 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
THIS ONE !! Disk Drive Maxtor 6E040L0 (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133) !!
Optical Drive ATAPI CD-RW 52X24 (52x/24x CD-RW)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST RW/DVD GCC-4320B (DVD:16x, CD:32x/10x/40x DVD-ROM/CD-RW)

[waresoft]

I see you ran Norton System works. Have you run a scan with Norton Disk Doctor?

You may be able to access the drive by repairing the Master Boot Record from the recovery console.

To start Recovery Console from the Windows XP operating system CD

Insert the Windows XP Professional operating system CD into the CD-ROM drive, and restart the computer. When prompted, press a key to start Setup.

At the Setup Notification screen, press ENTER.

After the Welcome to Setup screen appears, select To repair a Windows XP installation using Recovery Console by pressing R.

A menu that lists one or more Windows XP installations appears.

Type the number corresponding to the installation that you want to use, and then press ENTER.

At the prompt, enter the password for the local Administrator account to access the contents of the local hard disk. Recovery Console accepts only the local Administrator account password.

Try this command to fix your MBR:

FixmbrRepairs the master boot record of the boot disk. The fixmbr command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console

fixmbr [device_name]

Parameter

device_name

The device (drive) on which you want to write a new master boot record. The name can be obtained from the output of the map command. An example of a device name is:

\Device\HardDisk0.

Example

The following example writes a new master boot record to the device specified:

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0

Note

If you do not specify a device_name, a new master boot record will be written to the boot device, which is the drive on which your primary system is loaded.
If an invalid or nonstandard partition table signature is detected, you will be prompted whether you want to continue. If you are not having problems accessing your drives, you should not continue. Writing a new master boot record to your system partition could damage your partition tables and cause your partitions to become inaccessible.

Or try this command to fix your boot sector:

FixbootWrites a new partition boot sector to the system partition. The fixboot command is only available when you are using the Recovery Console

fixboot [drive]

Parameter

drive

The drive to which a boot sector will be written. This replaces the default drive, which is the system partition you are logged on to. An example of a drive is:

D:

Example

The following example writes a new partition boot sector to the system partition in drive D:

fixboot d:

Note

Using the fixboot command without any parameters will write a new partition boot sector to the system partition you are logged on to.

[AmazonSister]

1st: Thank you !!!
2nd: I believe you know your stuff because that is exactly what I had concluded (after about 3 weeks of brekin-my-head-'ginst-desk, that is...) Going now, but 1 questian, when I've logged onto Recov. each time it asks me :which ...to log onto" My drives are C:\= boot, D:\= partition, (factory-ready) and E:\=CD-ROM, I get 2 choices C: and E:. Which do I log onto?

[AmazonSister]

That is I' figured I needed to fix MBR, not HOW to fix it... :)~

[waresoft]

You want to log into your boot drive, that is where your installation of XP is.

It will probably be like c:\windows or something like that.

[Play_The_0dds]

i did a lot of looking to find a program, that had a free trial that actually worked, i tried this one and it did. hope it helps you out.
http://download.com.com/3000-2094-10....html?tag=list

[TauLepton]

I agree, either your MBR's partition table or your boot sector is at fault. However, I would not use fixboot, especially if you are working with an NTFS partition. It has been known to write FAT12 boot sectors to NTFS partitions. (This happened to me, and there are many other reported incidents.) I've successfully used TestDisk to repair an NTFS bootsector, and it supports every filesystem I've ever heard of. MBRtool works well for backing up, restoring, and repairing MBRs, though I don't think it can do anything with boot sectors.
Here's testdisk's website: www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.html
Here's mbrtool: http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/mbrtool.htm