Partition Magic problem

[Cat]

Hi,

I really hope someone can help me here I've turned my computer into a 20lb paperweight. Now I'd just deal with it and reformat had I not been a complete tool and didn't backup all my files to cd.

This is what happened, I had 4 partitions on my harddrive and had decided to merge them as I was running out of room on the main partition so I installed Partition Magic 7.0 Pro and chose to merge the first two adjacent partitions C and D. I ran it and as it was finishing up I saw some errors flash by but it went too fast for me to get the numbers, I assumed that some of the files had been corrupted during the merge and wasn't too worried. The system went into automatic reboot and during the boot screens after it checked the PCI device listing I got this:

A disk read error occurred
Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart

So I did but I just get the error again, this is when the faint stirrings of panic begin to set in but I have followed the directions and created the disks Partition Magic asked me to make just in case of emergency so I take a deep breath and boot from the bootable disk they had me make and run the other disk that has a limited version of the program on it. Unfortunately all it tells me is that I have partition table error #113 and the only operation it offers me to perform is format... only wait... I don't want to lose everything!

Now I'm panicking. I do a little more looking around, run my XP disk but I'm not well enough versed in DOS to really know what to do there to rescue the files and while I'm poking around I see that XP says I have a partition C that is about half the harddrive and the rest is unpartitioned space... I figure that can't be right since I had 4 partitions and I only attempted to merge 2 of them so there should at least be 2 left and then maybe the rest is unpartitioned cause the merge didn't work. So I boot from a 98 boot disk and there it is again... 1 partition and the rest is unpartitioned space - half the drive is unpartioned and half is so it seems the other 2 partitions E and F have somehow merged.

Please please please tell me there is something I can do to rescue the information... I've done nothing as of yet - thought about installing XP on the C drive (the only existing partition) but I'm thinking that it might be the space holding the majority of my files which were on E and I don't want to do anything without getting some advice first. If there's anything I can do about this, any way to retrieve the information... or better yet fix the error and not have to reformat (not likely I know but I can dream can't I?) any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

Cat

 

[sippin codeine]

I think you need to set an active partition.

 

[Cat]

OK, I'm not sure how to do that though. Amongst the Advanced options on the Partition Magic program from the disk I made it had a Set Active option, although it seems to already have been selected I should click on that then? Thanks

Cat

edit:

Ok I clicked on it and it said there was no active partition and said Change active partition to: (BAD), I'm supposed to choose OK or Cancel... I'm not sure what to do here, setting the active partition to BAD doesn't seem like the right thing. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks again

 

[stumanoo]

i had a similar problem with PM. I tried to merge 2 partitions and got the error messages u describe. What had happened is that PM had moved the data into the Partition which was to bacome the main one but had not deleted the dufunct partition which confused windows (i guess the master boot record had been corrupted in some way).

i sorted it by booting from my 98 disk
run fdisk
view the partition information
if the drive which should have been merged and deleted
is still there then delete it manually

mow windows should boot.

this worked for me

hope it helps

 

[Cat]

Right, ok I ran fdisk from a 98 boot disk and instead of my original 4 partitions C(15gigs),D(5gigs),E(5gigs) and F(15gigs) I now have C(20gigs) and unpartitioned space (20gigs) - those aren't the exact figures in gigs but it's close to 20 for each. I was merging C and D. Any ideas? Thanks

Cat

 

[sippin codeine]

There should be an option to re-distribute free space, although i'm not totally sure if thats what you need to do, see i have PM8 but i made two 20 gig partitions like a year and a half ago, and i havent really needed to mess with it since then.

the amount of partitions that you had and the sizes of them were a mistake.

 

[Cat]

Yes I know, that's why I was merging them, there was a point to it once upon a time but it isn't useful anymore to have that many... I can't do anything except Set Active and Format - everything else is greyed out. Thanks though.

 

[sippin codeine]

It looks like you just need to make another partition with the un-partitioned space. just make c: and d: thats all i have.
If Major sees this thread he might be able to help you seeing that he has used PM within the last year. unlike me

 

[Cat]

If I tell it to create a partition with the unpartitioned space won't it destroy all the information that's there? Thanks.

Cat

 

[sippin codeine]

I dont think so, if you format it might.