editing the partition table or some other way to recover a partiti

I have a HDD that has crashed. It was running Windows XP Pro and only had 1
partition. The BIOS recognizes the drive and its geometry, the
manufacturer's diagnostic tools report that the HDD has no errors. But the
BIOS reports that no partitions are on the drive. I have done nothing to
alter the HDD at this point. A friend of mine had a similar problem a couple
of years ago and he solved it by editing the partition table because he
remembered the exact way he partitioned the drive (but he doesn't remember
what he used or how he did it - it's been a while). He had no data loss. I
am thinking that doing the same would work in this situation since the HDD
only has 1 partition and I have several other systems that I've configured
the exact same way. Does anyone know how I can get the partition recogized
by either editing the partition table or some other means.

"Nate" wrote in message
...
I have a HDD that has crashed. It was running Windows XP Pro and only had
1
partition. The BIOS recognizes the drive and its geometry, the
manufacturer's diagnostic tools report that the HDD has no errors. But
the
BIOS reports that no partitions are on the drive. I have done nothing to
alter the HDD at this point. A friend of mine had a similar problem a
couple
of years ago and he solved it by editing the partition table because he
remembered the exact way he partitioned the drive (but he doesn't remember
what he used or how he did it - it's been a while). He had no data loss.
I
am thinking that doing the same would work in this situation since the HDD
only has 1 partition and I have several other systems that I've configured
the exact same way. Does anyone know how I can get the partition
recogized
by either editing the partition table or some other means.

You could boot the machine with a Win98 boot disk from www.bootdisk.com,
then edit the partition table with ptedit.exe from
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/englis.../pq/utilities/.

Alternatively, you could use RecoveryExpert from www.acronis.com
to recover lost partitions.