Here is the situation, I have a system that was upgraded so the motherboard was chnaged and when I went to boot to WinXP setup/installation the HD was listed as "[unknown]" and not NTFS. It was originally formatted to "FAT32" but then was converted to "NTFS". Could converting it from "FAT32" to "NTFS" without formating the HD have caused this problem? Weird thing is I can view the files but WinXP setup shows the HD as an "[unknown]" partition. Is there an app that can fix this so WinXP setup recongnizes the HD as "NTFS "and not "[Unknown]"? Formatting would be a last resort as there are files that are needed. I have "Ultimate BootCD" and "Hiren's BootCD v8.4" but couldn't find an app that can fix this issue.
Is this the main OS harddrive from your old system? Why not boot it with your new system? It should boot into Windows and ask you for drivers for your new mobo. If this is successful, then copy everything to somewhere (backup partition or another hdd) before you format/install a fresh OS onto the hdd, if you want to. Or if it's possible, get another pc to detect this drive and copy everything out before you format this drive and install a fresh WinXP. Converting FAT32 to NTFS with data in the HDD should not pose any problem. I did it almost everyday, except that it's an automated task. But it's still the same. Just my 2cents.
The board uses a different chipset. The HD is PATA. It seem the MFT is messed up so I have to transfer every onto another HD and format the messed up HD boohoo
I did these steps: Boot from Windows XP CD-ROM Press "R" at prompt to enter recovery console type chkdsk /r (will take several minutes to complete) type chkdsk /p (will take a few minutes) type fixboot c: type exit, restart system. but at "chkdsk /r" I am not sure but it seemed to have stopped at 50% and I was too impatient so I pressed the reset button which I shouldn't have done.