bajackso

Let me explain my situation. I used to run Windows XP SP2 and Ubuntu linux on the same PC using GRUB. I deleted the linux partitions, but the GRUB loader still came up and my system wouldn't boot. I read on these forums to try "fixmbr" and "fdisk /mbr" to uninstall GRUB. After performing those steps,when I turn on my computer it refuses to boot and says "Invalid Partition Table..." Someone PLEASE tell me I haven't lost all my data... I backed up my important files on a secondary hard drive (which was in the same machine). Does anyone know how I can fix this and get my system to boot? Really all I care about is recovering my data! A fresh Windows install won't be a problem if I can just recover the contents of one of my hard drives... Thanks in advance.

Ok... after taking my drives to a friend of a friend who makes his living from working with computers, I believe we have made some progress. Now I boot from the hard drive's setup CD, and the program is able to see the three partitions on my primary 160GB drive (my backup drive has been rendered useless). The only problem is that it does not show their sizes correctly. It shows the partitions as being ~80GB, ~970GB, and 0MB, when they are really ~130GB, ~25GB, and ~700MB. This friend of a friend thinks this is good news since the program is seeing the correct number of partitions, but it just can't seem to sort them out... At this point, I am just trying to recover ANY data possible. Does anyone have any idea of what I shoud try next?? Any help is greatly appreciated! edit: re-wording