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[Splinter]

This is the second time i've had this in so many weeks. Very strange.
I was hoping it might just be the boot sector.
PC wont boot, and on booting to ubcd or pm8 it shows disk not formatted. On the first occasion the client didn't care as he had a full backup and I reformatted etc, but this time the disk is/was packed with years of family pics etc and not backed up.
Before I format i need to try a recovery program.
I've Googled and there seem to be a plethora of progs. Does anyone have any particular favourite, free preferably that i can download?

[Wooster]

Did you try the Recovery Console that comes with XP on?

With XP you could boot from a CD, select the Recovery Console and run FIXBOOT, FIXMBR etc. from the command line.
With Vista and 7 it's a wee bit different but the instructions are here..
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

[Splinter]

Thanks mate and I'm sorry to have bothered you with this.
Zilch data for recovery, no partitions.......disk completely unformatted. Couldn't even find anything to recover using UBCD v5.0 recovery tools.
Mobo the culprit imho and i'm not reinstalling XP as this is not the first time. They'll have to buy a new machine or at least mobo and cpu.
 

[Wooster]

It's no problem Splint. 
I reckon a new system is the way forward but you're right enough if they baulk at the cost by swapping out the root cause hardware...and maybe adding a new HDD in there as well, keeping the old drive in for storage.