Invalid Partition Table when reinstalling Windows

I have an Acer notebook - Acer Aspire 3000 - it was acquired from a friend in Germany and it has no Recovery CDs. After I tried to install Russian Windows XP (SP2) instead of a German one I faced some serious problems.

First I updated the firmware to 3a26, then I created a new active partition instead of the old boot partition and hidden unformatted space (which turned out to be the Disk-to-Disk Recovery utility) using the Windows XP Professional boot CD. The files copied OK but after the reboot I got "Invalid Partition Table" message. I checked the C: partition and all the boot files were there. I tried several times deleting and creating partitions but the system didn't want to boot. Could it be because of D2D Recovery deletion? Is it possible to reinstall Windows without the Recovery CDs and D2D Recovery partition?

 

Try booting into DOS and making sure the C:\ drive is set as the active partition before installing windows.

 

The boot partition *is* set to active, nevertheless, I keep getting the same error.

And besides, the notebook doesn't have a floppy drive, even booting from a floppy image on a CD doesn't work (I tried Win98 & Partition Magic boot floppies so far). I only managed to boot into ERD Commander shell. Unfortunately I cannot launch files in it.

Did anyone with a similar model managed to reinstall Windows without D2D partition and Rescue CDs? I want to be sure there is another way apart from taking the notebook to the service center (I don't have the warranty agreement).

 

You can make a boot cd using Nero. Nero's trial version is the full version for 30 days. It has never failed me.

 

Problem resolved! I downloaded Hitachi Fitness test and cleared all HDD contents. Then I recreated the partition structure during Windows installation.