windows wont boot, partition table does not have a valid system partit

Hi, I turned my pc today and the message up on the screen said 'Windows failed to boot.  It said to run the Windows disc and use the 'repair windows' to fix it.  Having done that I got the following message:

'Partition table repair result completed successfully.  Error code =0x0 Time taken 22837ms.  The partition table does not have a valid system partition.'

I tried this several times, still get the same answer.  I am at a loss.  Any help would be appreciated.  I tried using F8 to get in that way, but that was unsuccessful too.  I really don't want to lose everything that's on there, if possible, mostly emails.  Haven't had a chance to take them off yet.  I only have  Windows on the C: drive and my emails.  I have other internal & external drives which I use for everything else.

Thanks for reading and in advance for any help offered.

hedley

Did you try running System Repair up to 3 times? It often takes more than one time to fix a problem.

Hi Ztrucker, thanks for the reply.

I tried the repair disc again 3 times.  Seems it might have been in vain.  I discovered in the event that my windows has moved to another interanl hard disk, however that happened.  There was no system showing to click on, so I went for load drivers, then in an effort to find the drivers, I found that windows had actually moved!!

My question now is, how do I get windows back where it belongs, without losing anything, if possible?

Second question, how can it move in the first place?  It was there when I closed the pc down the night before and gone the next morning.

Your help would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

hedley

That's not possible unless by move you mean it now occupies a different drive letter. That can happen if the partition table got messed up which is what it sounds like.

To prevent the possible loss of data I would immediately backup the disk, especially the partition the OS is on as that is where your User data resides. The best way is to do an image backup to an external hard drive using a program like Macrium Reflect Free. Then if it becomes necessary you can format and reinstall windows and restore your data.

Once you have that then you could try a program like EaseUS Partition manager, see if it can repair the partition table and get everything working again.