Windows Partitions changed from NTFS to FAT32 using FixBoot command

Once I used FixBoot command for solving booting problem. To my surprise, the file system got changed from NTFS to FAT32 indeed. I started wondering if I have done anything unintentionally that changed from file system because I was not able to access my data then on computer start up. After discussing this matter with my colleagues, I came to know that this one is a common scenario while using FixBoot command.

Actually, the problem crops up when you attempt to start your Windows XP Professional computer. Rather it fails to start successfully due to certain boot up process related issues. At that time you would be using fixboot command to solve the boot issues. There are chances that it may change your file system from NTFS to FAT and as a result all of your hard drive partitions as well as the data become inaccessible. This fallible behavior leads to partition loss and in turn inaccessibility of data within.

While trying to boot up Windows XP Professional computer, you get the following error message that halts the whole booting process.

We apologize for the inconvenience, but windows did not start successfully.

Following this error message, Windows gives you options for again booting up: Normal Mode, Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Command Prompt and Safe Mode with Networking.

Now on attaching the affected hard drive to another system as a Slave, which has Windows XP Professional installed, the system assigns drive letter to the hard drive. If you try to access this new drive, XP gives you the following error message:

The disk is not formatted; do you wish to format it now?

If you go on attaching the hard drive with the other PC and try to install new operating system using “Leave the current file system intact (No Changes)” option, this process too fails because the partition is listed as an unknown partition – “Partition 1 (Unknown)”.

Next step is to use Recovery Console and use CHKDSK command to detect and fix file system problems. In this case also, you might encounter the following error message:

The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems.

When you try fixboot command to resolve the boot issue, you get the following series of messages:

“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.”

After these bunch of steps, the system boots properly with but your NTFS partitions become FAT32 and data stored on them becomes inaccessible. The FixBoot utility might create a FAT boot partition.

Now what can be done in such a hazardous situation??

Use effective data recovery software that is capable of recovering files from corrupt, lost, deleted Windows partitions. Kernel for FAT and NTFS is great recover deleted files that performs thorough scan on the hard disk and recovers all NTFS partitions data, which is formatted as FAT file system.

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