Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Hello,

I've been foolish....

So, please can anyone advise re this:

I have C:\ with one partition with XP HOME on it.
I fitted another disk from another PC into another IDE slot. I intended to format this and then use it as extra space. Because it came from another PC, it had a fully working copy of win 98SE on it.

Yesterday I installed Partiton Magic V8 but did not use it to change anything.

Then I installed Boot Magic, which comes with it, thinking that I would not use it yet.

When Boot Magic installed, it noticed the win 98.

When I came to boot up next time, XP will not start. It goes through its initialisation checks, then it says "Loading Bootmagic..." and then it hangs on a black screen.

If I start from a bootable CD or floppy I can start in DOS and read ny C drive, but does anyone know how I might get my system to restart?

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

As part of the installation of Boot Magic, you should have made a Boot Magic Rescue Diskette. Boot from that diskette now, and it will restore access to the OS partition: this is why the Rescue Diskette exists.

Other things you might try are removing the hard disk that you recently installed.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

I'm afraid I did not create a resue disk. I guess I just thought it was yet another boot disk. Oh well!

I pulled the IDE cable out of the W98 HD but to no avail...

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

With luck you should still be able to boot to safe mode and undo the boot magic stuff from there I think. If not try booting to the XP CD and repairing the XP instalation from there.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

I see that a rescue disk appears on the PM CD and it has a number of utilities but I would not know what to do with them. There must be a way......

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Maybe you can download a rescue disk image?

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Thanks once more Soc. glad you are online!

I put the XP disk in but chickened out of playing with it I don't want to lose my data! I thought that there may be a line in an .ini file somewhere that I could rem out and so stop Boot Magic from starting. What do you think?

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

could it be that the MBR is corrupt? Is it worth booting from the XP disk and running fixmbr from the console screen?

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

The XP disk should detect the XP installation and repair the MBR so it can boot.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Another thing: is there a way of copying all my important files to my external USB disK? Is there a way I can get USB limping along? If I could back up my data files I'd feel a lot happier about messing around....

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Unfortunately not ... the USB drivers will be loaded within windows.

The data on the disk should be fine, it's just the boot loader that needs fixing.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

My best bet is the the location for the XP partition got messed in the boot.ini file on C:\ with the changes made after adding an extra HD and running the boot magic so that is the file that may need editing.

But as others have said you should be able to use the XP CD to repair or even overwrite the existing install without any loss of data. At worst you may need to reinstall some programs but data files as such should survive the process as you will not be doing a format.

Hope that helps.

EDIT: From memory there should be an option to go to last known good boot which will revert to that version of the startup files see if you can get to that via holding the Ctrl key down on boot or hitting the F8 key prior to windows trying to load.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Hello Jelly,

Would fix MBR just get me into more trouble if it changed anything? I haven't a clue!

Maybe I'll give it a try....

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Thanks Nemesis.....Here goes...(gulp)

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

If you run fixmbr from the XP disk, then it should rewrite it to boot the XP partition

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Hello all,
I put the XP disk in and got to the consoloe, but the first thing it asked me for was the administrators password. That's my accountg, but it would not accept it. Is there some other password that I should be using?

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

It should be the password u set up the when XP was installed, if you didn't enter a password, then just press enter when asked for one

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Thanks J,

Here we go again...

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Afraid not! Boot Magic works by replacing the MBR with its own, and does all its work before any part of any operating system loads. So you can't affect Boot Magic by tweaking any operating system settings.

Boot Magic will not install on an NTFS file system, which might be what your XP system has. If it has installed at all, it will have found itself a FAT partition to install itself on. You need to make sure that FAT partition is still available and unhidden. If that FAT partition is a data partition, you will get a black screen after selecting it from Boot Magic.

If Boot Magic will not load at all, then one reason might be that the partition that it installed itself to is no longer available at boot time.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

As you are reinstalling the OS, not formatting the HDD, your files should not become damaged as a result of playing with the OS.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

What about the registry and the shortcuts...

Can you get hold of an XP disk ? You can then boot the system from the xp cd and run system rescue... This will repair the install for you...

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

True, but the data files themselves should remain intact.

Putting meld51 at rest that after reinstalling the OS he should then be able to see the files, even if installs of the apps to run them on subsequently need to be performed.

Fixing the problem and the MBR would be the optimal solution though.

I again realise why I am hesitant to do anything to reclaim the unpartitioned 10Gb on my HDDs

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Hello All
Just one last thing.....I got as far as getting to the console and fixmbr. I gives you a warning that I have a non standard mbr and if I press proceed then I may make my partitions inaccessible.

Just before I press the button.....has anyone any reservations?

Sorry I'm such a wimp!!

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Try this m8 it does work, or at least it did for me. :)

http://www.digitalwebcast.com/2002/0..._boot_toot.htm

Hope it helps.

Re:

Snuffs

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Thanks folks : problem solved!!

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Id like to hear how?

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Well it's fixed but I don't understand why! Here Is what I did and what happened.

I just could not bring myself to do a fixmbr except as a very last resort.
I thought I could re install XP as a second to last resort and put up with some of my applications not working too well. I suppose I would have to reinstall some of them as well.
However, since it was easy to do I thought that first I would swap my HD around physically so that my Win 98 HD was in IDE0 and my XP HD was in IDE1. I thought I could then boot from win 98 and then use it to back up my data onto an external disk. (wasn't sure about this but what could I lose?)
I swapped them and sure enough I could get Win 98 to boot.
After it had searched around for all the drivers it asks you to reboot, and guess what, when it restarted it started in XP!
I quickly took the opportunity to backup all my data.
Next I did a system restore to the point before I installed Boot Magic and Partition Magic.
After that I formatted my Win 98 disk to be sure of having 1 OS only (for now).
Then I ran a checkdisk to make sure that there were no errors: there were none!
I checked the BIOS to ensure that it was seeing the HDs correctly and it was.

So that's it. Fixed but I don't know why.

If anyone else knows the logic then let me know!

Actually I'm surprised to find that the IDE designation seems to move with the HDD. My BIOS still sees it as having the OS in IDE0?

Anyway thanks for all your time and attention. It really helps to chew the fat when these things happen!

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Is it easy to make a cd bootable ? My xp disk doesnt boot like that

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

If you have Nero...

Get a bootable floppy disk or make one. Select bootable cd from the list. Select the A drive and nero will copy the startup files. Make sure you edit the autoexec.bat ect before this point.

Copy the files you want onto the cd and burn....

Thats it ! :)

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

great, thanks. sounds simple

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

XP CD-ROMs should boot themselves, but you do ned to have your BIOS configured to try starting from CD-ROM before hard disk.

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

My guess is that the CD drive is not set as the first BOOT option in the BIOS. What do you think?

Mel

Re: Partition Magic, Boot Magic: XP won't start!
 

Yep......

Check advanced bios features and look for boot seqence or 1,2,3rd boot device.