Im trying to help my father who after having used PQMagic for the 20+ time finally had it screw up his partitions. He was attempting to shrink one partition and put the free space into a different one:
[C | [D|E|F] ] (Where C is primary, and D,E,F are Logical)
He was trying to put space from F into D. PQ Magic failed while resizing F; the machine is now unbootable (gets a "Cannot find ntoskrnl.exe" on boot). However, from some limited info the system thinks it at least has the two primary partitions. What he needs is data of the D partition.
I have had expeience in rebuiling a partition table by hand becuase Norton ghost toasted the entries in the boot record - but this is a little difficult as am over an hour from my father (Which is what makes the entire situation worse). He went and bought a program called "RecoverLost Data" by StompSoft - but has yet to use it. I am wondering if there is any recommended software for this situtation. My father would rather not have to use any Linux based utility - I would be open to it; but dont want to explain it to my dad over the phone.
Thanks
-dave
What operating system is running on your dad's machine?
Andy
Windows 2000 (SP4) - I believe the drives where all formatted NTFS.
The symptoms sound like a corrupt or damaged boot.ini file, and it may be this that needs repairing, by re-writing the MBR. It can be done using the Win2000 software disk.
If you can provide your dad with instructions over the phone, get him to start a recovery console. If the computer will boot to the CD-ROM first, then insert the Win2000 disk and boot to this. This is probably the easiest method.
You may have to guide him through setting the BIOS to boot to the CD before the HDD. This is fairly simple - depending on the BIOS OS (most are AWARD). Press DEL key at POST/BOOT and select 'Advanced BIOS Features', then edit First boot device to CD-ROM. Save and reboot, (make sure you insert the Win2000 CD).
If successful you will get a blue screen with white writing, and this is the Windows start up menu.
To repair a Windows 2000 installation by using the recovery console, press C
You will finally end up at a MS-DOS prompt similar to the MS-DOS shell
Run "fdisk /mbr" and it will re-write the boot.ini file for you.
Fingers crossed it should boot on next start-up.
If not let us know, and we'll think about another solution.
Good luck
Andy
That has seemed to work for my father - after screens full of chkdsk on windows booting, he was able to access the data. It appears as though pqmagic died after shrinking the partition. I told him to copy off all of the data and should reinstall (just to be safe).
Thanks,
dave