A hard disk partition is created on a hard disk to create and efficiently manage the hard disk. One big advantage of creating partitions is the segregation of the operating system files and program files from the user files. Because of this, the image backups of operating system and other software can be easily managed. Also, you always have a separate area for operating system virtual memory swapping/paging. However, even the hard disk partitions are prone to damage. The partitions can get lost, missed, or damaged due to various reasons such as power outages, virus infections, abrupt and improper system shutdown, damaged operating system, etc. Due to these, the partition can become inaccessible. To resolve such situations, you should use appropriate measures. However, if you do not succeed in doing so then you should use a third-party partition recovery software to recover the corrupted partition.

Consider a scenario wherein you switch on your Windows XP computer system. Instead of booting up, it shows a blank screen. An error message may be displayed, which could be either of the following messages:

“Missing operating system.” “Error loading operating system.” “Invalid partition table.” “Unable to read partition table.”

Once you get this message the computer does not boot and all the partitions become corrupt and, thus, inaccessible. Cause:

The root cause of this error message is that the partition table may have got damaged, which has resulted in it being inaccessible. Resolution:

To resolve this issue, you should replace the corrupt partition by a new one. This could be done by formatting the system and installing a fresh copy of Windows operating system. Although this method would surely recover partition but the precious data will be lost. So, for performing safe partition recovery you should consider using a third-party partition recovery software to recover Windows partition. Such read-only tools recover partition without damaging the existing content.

Stellar Phoenix Windows Data Recovery is a recovery software that enables you to recover corrupt partitions from FAT and NTFS file systems. This partition recovery software is able to recover data from various file systems such as FAT32, VFAT, NTFS, and NTFS5. It is able to recover more than 185 different file types from various storage media such as hard disks, pen drives, iPods, etc. In addition, it is bundled with a Boot CD that is pretty handy when the system is unable to boot. It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista, Server 2003, XP, and 2000.r