Fixboot destroyed the HDD-structure

Compaq nc6000.

Old system that crashed, I've copied out files with TestDisk, all is well. For some nostalgia I wanted to try and fix it without reinstalling Windows XP.

Tried to do a repair install from a CD, it didn't find any Windows installations, partition1 (unknown). I tried to rebuild with TestDisk but that didn't work.

I ran fixboot from the console and this happened:

Fixboot is attempting to detect the file system type.
The boot sector is corrupt
Fixboot is checking the file system type
The partition is using the FAT file system
Fixboot is writing a new boot sector
The new boot sector was successfully written

Now when I run TestDisk it only shows a FAT partiton that is a few MBs. Before I got a NTFS partition that I could access, view files etc.

Never had this happen when running fixboot, unbelieveable that you're not given the option to abort. I know I should have taken an image and worked on that, hindsight is 20/20.

In case anyone finds this thread and have the same problem. I used TestDisk to rebuild the boot sector and that fixed the problem, luckily the MFT wasn't corrupted.

Lucky indeed !  But thanks for saying how you fixed it.

Chris Cosgrove