Can't read C drive after Norton AV repair

**nero77** · May 30th, 2002, 12:37 AM

Hi all,

I have a 13GB Seagate barracuda hdd with a 9GB windows ME and 3GB win 2000 Pro partitions. All was fine for 8 months until 3 days ago. The NT Loader screen would come up and when i get into Windows ME i have no CD-ROM support. Well in fact i got that horrible IDE parent and child device error. However in Win Pro i could see all CD-ROMS. I ran Norton AV in ME and it couldn't read the boot record but it could read the MBR. So i figured i had a virus in the boot record because my computer would run a bit slower to with the virus in memory.

I tried many things like booting up with systems disks and scanning from A: after booting into DOS. I tried FDISK /MBR. Then i tried SYS C which got rid of NTlder and went straight into ME. Now here lies the problem. I did another Norton AV scan and the options to repair and innoculate came up. I chose repair and since then when i boot up i get "NTlder is missing". So now my C drive is unreadable and i can't install ME again on it saying i don't have enough space i.e "checking the registry and windows ME requires this amount of space etc". I can't even access ME(C) partiton when i slave the hdd of another machine. But i can see the Win pro partition (D).

I have tried repairing the Win Pro installation using win pro setup floppies and ERP disk but no go.

**Bob The Great** · June 3rd, 2002, 01:09 PM

I had Norton do the same thing with 98. What I think it did was currupted your MBR. I ended up reformating, but about a month later I ran across a command that I though might work. I never tried it, but fdisk/MBR may fix it. here is a link that gives a discription of the command.

You might research this a bit. I'm not sure how it would work as I have never used it. Anyone else have input?

BTW Welcome to TechIMO!

**Tekk** · June 3rd, 2002, 01:33 PM

is there a copy of NTLDER on the Win2k CD? If so you can copy it straight from the CD in Recovery Console (if you can get there). Also, I would try doing the MBR again as Bob said. Ya never know. Otherwise, it looks like the only thing you could do is slave the drive on another computer to hopefully backup any important data and then reformat that thing

An unfortunate event but it might have to be done. Good luck

**elroy** · June 4th, 2002, 01:48 AM

I've tried the fdisk/MBR thing before and had no luck. My guess is you're in for a reformat and maybe re-partitioning. I ran into a similar problem when running an anti virus scan. It said boot records didn't match, would I like it to repair this. I said yes, don't tell it yes.

**nero77** · June 4th, 2002, 10:11 AM

I can actually get into Windows 2000 by putting a floppy in with NTldr, Ntdetect, NTOSkrnl and a made up boot.ini file. However all my stuff is on the corrupt c: partition which has windows ME. I can't access it either from windows explorer.

My guess is that everyrthing boots of the C and since the MBR is corrupt it can't then go to the boot manager which has the options to go into 2000 or ME. Therefore it times out and i get missing or corrupt messages.

I will use another hdd to see if i can transfer any data otherwise get a professional to do it.

By the way Norton Anti Virus sucks, just press innoculate not repair or your dead meat.