File Allocation Table Apparently Corrupted by Microsoft Scandisk

[Dan Hatton <dch24@mrao.cam.ac.uk>]

I use both Windows 98 and Debian on my machine, using LOADLIN for dual
booting; I have something of a filesystem disaster resulting from the
following course of action earlier today:

1.  I divided my Linux /home partition (/dev/hda9) into two Linux ext2
partitions, /dev/hda9, which I wanted to retain as a Linux /home
filesystem, and /dev/hda10, which I wanted to hand over to Windows for a
bit of extra space (having carefully backed up /dev/hda9 first like a
good little Linux hack.)

2.  I used cfdisk to change the type of /dev/hda10 to Windows 95 FAT32
(LBA) to match my other Windows 98 partition, /dev/hda1.  All filesystems
were still fine at this point.

3.  I then rebooted the machine.  Config.sys was read from /dev/hda1 as
normal, producing my boot menu, from which I chose Windows 98.  Windows,
understandably, ran scandisk on /dev/hda10.  On completion, it crashed
out, complaining of an invalid command.com.  When I tried to reboot, I
found myself with an 'invalid system disk' message.

4.  I booted from my Windows 98 rescue floppy, and found the root
directory of C:\ (i.e. /dev/hda1) full of garbage.  Lots of lovely
incomprehensible filenames made up of non-ASCII symbols.  The only
readable object is the scandisk.log file, which mentions in passing that
copy #2 of the file allocation table has been rewritten.

I take all this to mean that my data are still on the disc, but the
directory structure has been corrupted; any ideas on how I can restore it
without having to resort to my (6 week old) backup of /dev/hda1, please? 

Thanks

Dan Hatton

(Extremely stressed about losing all my, and my Mother's, lovely
multimedia files.)