reddog093's reply history at Help.com

99% of the time it’s the green one

Problem Solved…I installed a floppy drive and used Partition Magic disks to repair it.. Worked very well :)

Quick update…as far as the flash drive bootup utility I haven’t gotten it to work….Well, I’ve got my USB Flash Drive to be bootable but can’t get the DiskPatch software to load correctly even after following the slightly tricky directions…
I’m currently trying to obtain another linux to try, as my bare Mandriva and my Slackware installations are not workign. Hopefully the next one I get will at least let me run an operating system so I can backup my files!! Will keep ya updated..currently not solved :)

Thanks for the idea! i’ll definitely look into it…
While talking with a friend of mine today I was given another alternative which would be slow and tedious, but….as a last resort it seems a safe alternative. My friend suggested that I set my primary hard drive as a slave and then put an old hard drive that I have lying around as a master…with a linux OS or my OS recovery system installed on the “new” primary hard drive I could copy my important documents from the “slave” onto this HD - thus letting me format the primary and not worry about loss of information when fixing partitions. This sounds like a 4 hour minimum process but at least I know i have alternatives…My first attempt today will be with the “Do It Yourself” Disk repair program that claims to be able to repair partition tables w/o data loss….however, I don’t have a floppy drive in any of my computers anymore and I’m having difficulty making a USB Flash Drive boot disk…but that’s another story.
Whatever I do i’ll let you all know for future reference :)