[lug] Partitions hosed! Can't boot from floppy

[Mike McCallister]

Hi folks!

I did a really dumb thing, and I'm hoping there's some way to bail out.

I have had difficulty running PartitionMagic dual-booting Win98 and Linux, 
but now I have an urgent problem. I cannot boot to either OS at this time, 
after letting PM "correct" a perceived error.

Some history: I've been using PM on different machines since v3.0, 
primarily to manage several Windows partitions. When I bought a Dell 
Dimension system a little over a year ago, I planned to run Windows and 
Linux. I installed PM 5, then attempted to install Corel Linux. Corel's 
install program did not see the PM-created ext2 partitions, so I let the 
install program create new Linux partitions, which worked well. However, PM 
would not run at all, launching a 110 error (I think that's it) whenever I 
tried to load PM in Windows.

A few weeks ago, I deleted the Corel Linux partitions and installed SuSE 
Linux 7.1. Again, I let SuSE define the partitions, and again things were 
fine--both Win98 and SuSE booted fine from LILO.

Now, here's where I did the dumb thing: Since everything was running well, 
I was curious to see if PM would work in the current setup. Instead of the 
old error, it offered to fix a problem (what the specific message was, I 
couldn't tell you, unfortunately). Like an idiot, I clicked Yes. PM then 
did not load, but Windows still ran. I shut down the system, and went on 
vacation.

Upon my return, nothing will boot. LILO appears. When I tell it to run 
Windows, I get a DOS-like screen reporting "Loading Windows" that never 
ends. When I tell it to run Linux, I get assorted fsck errors that I cannot 
seem to repair. I attempted to reinstall SuSE and reconstruct the 
partitions that way. It showed about 20 "new" Linux Swap partitions, and I 
couldn't tell whether the data in the Windows extended partition was OK.

When trying to boot to the PM 5 rescue disk (or for that matter, the SuSE 
LILO boot disk, the Win98 rescue disk and the Ontrack SystemSuite 3 rescue 
disk), the system accesses the floppy once, and then seems to go to the 
(hosed) hard drive (BIOS boot order, BTW, is floppy-->CD-->hard drive). 
Then I get an endlessly-blinking cursor.

I'm assuming the system is completely hosed and I'll have to start over, 
but I'm hoping to use some DOS-based data recovery tools to pull some of my 
data off the drive. If only I could get to an A:\ prompt!

Powerquest's tech support seems clueless (it took three messages to 
convince them I couldn't boot to floppy!), and SuSE support hasn't answered 
yet.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated. Thanks!