Partitioning gone wrong

I have a multi boot system with 5 windows installs and linux and had a drive being used as a system drive with the boot information but was rarely used for booting an OS. Therefore I wanted to remove it as the system (boot) drive. I used EasyBCD to change the booting, although forgot about the Win 7 boot files.

I have had some problems over the previous few days with windows BSOD and there seems to of been a problem with the primary hard drive data cable, which I changed and now it appears to be better, however there is a chance that it could be a hard drive problem.

I rebooted and did some re-partioning on one drive, making some room on several partitions which was being used up by free space which I was reserving for another operating system, although a bit too big. I therefore expanded two primary partitions and shrank the free space to 60GB, expanding the two operating systems primary partitions, one an old XP Pro and the other Win 7 x64. The XP install was an install from a previous PC build and does not work on my current PC and I intended to install Win 7 x64 onto it.

Unfortunately, things went wrong! During the partition resize, the re-partitioning software came up with an IO error with a cross linked files being reported. The partitioning continued somewhat and seemed to complete okay. Following a reboot, my system wouldn't boot as I expected. However after repairing the booting and things were not right.

The partitioning was not correct, the partition sizes were as they were before partitioning with their original sizes. Many of the programs were not running properly or working.

I wonder whether the XP and Win 7 x64 installs files somehow got mixed up while things were being moved and stopped mid way.

After the cross linked files I wanted to do a check disk to try and resolve things. However chkdsk would not run. sfc would not run either.
chkdsk.exe cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64-bit versions of Windows.

sfc /scannow
Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation.

Some other programs give similar errors about compatibility.

For some reason there are no restore points.

I have managed to get windows to do a chkdsk at reboot by replacing chkdsk from the install DVD but it found nothing wrong.

I would like suggestions on how best to restore windows to a working state. I have lots of programs and customizations that I don't really want to have to redo from scratch.

First run a Malwarebytes scan on all drives, from Safe Mode if necessary. If it doesn't cooperate then download and burn to CD or write to flash stick, boot a run a full scan with Windows Defender Offline

Post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image so we can look at your config. Have your drives each labeled in their Properties box so these show on the map.

Install Partition Wizard to run Partition Wizard Check File System on all partitions and a Partition Wizard HD surface test. If indicated test the HD with the maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan.

Short of doing a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 (same for retail) I would skip to a Repair Install. Turn off everything in msconfig>Startup and >Services after hiding all MS Services.

This will reinstall the OS while keeping all settings, programs and files in place. However it can pass through bad settings without screening them out so has its limits. If you did not come close to the perfect install in the blue link above I would invest in it now while you have our help.

gregrocker said:

First run a Malwarebytes scan on all drives, from Safe Mode if necessary. If it doesn't cooperate then download and burn to CD or write to flash stick, boot a run a full scan with Windows Defender Offline

Post back a screenshot of Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image so we can look at your config. Have your drives each labeled in their Properties box so these show on the map.

Install Partition Wizard to run Partition Wizard Check File System on all partitions and a Partition Wizard HD surface test. If indicated test the HD with the maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan.

Short of doing a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 (same for retail) I would skip to a Repair Install. Turn off everything in msconfig>Startup and >Services after hiding all MS Services.

This will reinstall the OS while keeping all settings, programs and files in place. However it can pass through bad settings without screening them out so has its limits. If you did not come close to the perfect install in the blue link above I would invest in it now while you have our help.

Thank you for your reply. I attempted to install Malwarebytes but it refuses to run, giving a runtime error 48 file not found advpack. Safe mode made no difference, in fact it was far worse because explorer was continually crashing and nothing could be done except a reset. Task manager wouldn't run and no start menu or much of anything would work.

Partition Wizard shows no errors of any kind which I find very hard to believe after a failed re-partition which caused all these problems, mixing up Win XP and Win 7 x64 files. I have 5 hard drives and all partitions report no errors. The surface scan also shows no errors. I don't think Partition Wizard would even of run without replacing chkdsk.exe because it refused to run before I extracted the chkdsk.exe from the windows DVD.

I attempted a repair install and that met with countless errors. First complaining about disk space and after I made enough free space, it complained about a network adapter and updating the driver. However attempting to update the driver is a no go because the management console keeps crashing and the driver won't update. The repair install complained about SPFILEQ.dll, saying it was not designed to run on windows or contains an error. Setup would not continue. So many files seem corrupt and none functional that it seems a lost cause and re-installing seems the fastest option.

I really could of done without this ATM because it's yet another draw on my limited time with so many things seeming to of gone wrong. My router being destroyed by lightening and lots of other things also not going well. They say that shit happens......well lets be fair because I've had far too much of it recently. [Moan over]

Thanks you again for taking the time to help. I will read the re-install guide to see if there is anything which will help make it go smoothly.

Event viewer will not work either. So many files must of been corrupted/misplaced due to the partitioning failure that it is a surprise that I can even get into windows.

I have now re-partitioned it successfully using Partition Wizard. Disk 3 now has 3 primary partitions, of approx 60GB rather than 2x50GB and 1x80GB. I will install Win 7 x64 SP1 onto the old XP partition.

What an incredible mess, scattered redundant OS's all booting off of Win7 64 (System) partition when the best practice with separate HD's is always to install each OS on a separate HD with all other HD's unplugged during an install so that each remains independently booted only via the BIOS Boot priority or one-time BIOS Boot Menu key.

Then you add Linux on top of it which is always a wild card if you're using GRUB unless it's set up as shown in Where to install ubuntu in my system?.

There's really no way to fix such a mishmash without multiple open-heart surgeries which we reserve for sensible causes, so I'd delete the target partition and install Win7 as intended and hope it will configure all of your OS's into a multi-boot menu. If not install EasyBCD to add the missing ones.

Jack weren't you going to ask him how he's activated all of these?

Layback Bear said:

I surly was thinking about that.
I chose instead watching you straighten that mess out. It will be a challenge.
Like you stated "What an incredible mess"