[keith11]

Hello,

I am running Windows Vista SP1 on a Lenovo X61 tablet machine. I am dual booting Vista with Ubuntu 8.04. So here is the situation - I had four partitions for Vista: c, d, e and f. F drive was just some 30 MB partition that I had to keep there after I had tried to move and merge partitions with Paragon Partition Manager a few months ago. I had tried to merge F with D (as F showed adjacent to D, instead of E, in the partition chart) but when I did that and restarted the system, the system did not boot (I had dual boot then too). I was trying to find out the problem, so, I used Paragon Partition Manager from Hiren's Boot Disk and reverted the changes I had made (merging D and F) and everything was fine - I was able to boot fine. This is all a recollection of activity I did a few months ago.

A week ago, I tried to do the same, hoping it would work this time, but ended up in the same situation. What was worse this time was that Hiren's Boot Disk did not load some CDROM drivers so I could not access Paragon Parition manager or any other partition manager in that CD and I could not revert the changes. I tried another boot disk, Ultimate Boot Disk, but it also failed to download CDROM drivers (I don't get why it would not now when it worked fine a few moths ago). In addition to this, I could not boot Vista. At some point, after 4-5 hours, Ubuntu did not boot too. So, I reinstalled GRUB (the bootloader) and I was able to boot into Vista as well as Ubuntu.

Interestingly, when I booted in to Vista, I got the Paragon Partition Manager screen, with the changes I had wanted to make - merging D and F. There was no option for me to revert or cancel the changes, so the only thing I could do to pass that screen was ot click "Ok", which I did. After that task was completed, I booted into Vista. After booting, there was no F drive, just one D drive, but the problem is it shows as just a drive, with no data on it and unformatted too.So when I double-click on D drive to open it, it asks me if I want to format the drive. I do have backup of that drive but it is not the most current, and I looked at the backup I have and found that there is much more that I am missing in the backup, so I need to have the lost data on D recovered somehow.

It seems to me I will have to dig deep into partition tables and stuff, but I am not adept with all that. I am hoping I could change some file which would show the D drive with all my data in it - something like this worked for me in Ubuntu Linux. I would truly appreciate if someone could please guide me step-by-step in solving this problem. I need to have the data on that drive back, as it is important for work. Thanks a lot.

I am attaching two screen shots: one with E drive clicked on in Paragon Partition manager and one with D (the problem drive) clicked on.

Keith.

[keith11]

Anyone, please? Thanks.

Keith.

[keith11]

I have been waiting for a reply to this post...would appreciate if someone can throw some light on my problem and suggest a solution. I really need it...thanks.

Keith.