Minitool Partition Wizard killed my Windows

[sordid]

Hi!
I just tried the tool mentioned above to resize my partitions.
I'm running W7x64 on a SATA drive and XP on IDE, so I can startup both depending on which disk I set as boot disk in my BIOS.

So far things were running fine but ever since I tried to resize my Win7 partition to have more room for my storage partition (same physical drive), my Win7 keeps rebooting.
I see the normal boot screen and after a while, the PC restarts.

I tried the repair console to no avail - the assistant claims it couldn't restore anything, it doesn't even show me any restore points (which I know do exist).
The actual Win7 partition seems OK though as I can access most folders when I boot in XP.

What somehow puzzles me is the drive layout.
It says
D: System Storage: Active: Primary
E: Win 7: None: Primary
G: Storage: None: Primary
Plus my XP partition which works fine.
I tried to set E active but it was set to status None automatically after the next unsuccessul reboot.
But shouldn't D and E drive letters be the other way around?
Or even worse, shouldn't Win be E, Storage F and System Storage G?

Oh, booting from my Win7 DVD and trying the repair install option didn't work either.

Did a chkdsk and everything on my Win7 partition but it found no errors.

Any ideas how to fix this mess?

Cheers.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello sordid, welcome to Seven Forums!


Try this.

Disconnect all HDDs except the one with Windows 7 on and connect that to the #1 SATA port of the motherboard and set it as the second boot device after the CD/DVD drive.

First have a look at Option Two to see how to use diskpart to mark the Windows 7 partition as Active and do the 3 separate startup repairs with the separate restarts outlined in the main body of the tutorial to (re)create boot files to the Windows 7 partition.

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times

DISKPART : At PC Startup


Be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

 

[sordid]

Thanks a lot for the input.
Unfortunately, it didn't help either.
I see the normal boot screen, Windows starts loading and after a while (I think that's about the time when the desktop would show up under normal circumstances) reboots.
When I start in safe mode, I can see Windows showing a list of all the files it loads, then it reboots again too.

I'm still puzzled regarding the partition drive letters - they can't be right I think.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Did you disconnect the IDE HDD and boot the Windows 7 installation DVD to get to a command window and load diskpart, like in Method One of this tutorial?


DISKPART : At PC Startup

 

[sordid]

Yep. The partition was set to state Active.
But actually, nothing has changed, things still behave the way they did.
I even tried playing around with the drive letters meanwhile but that didn't change anything either.
I'm really disappointed with Partition Wizard - I have used many partitioning tools over the last 15 years and never had any difficulties; now I tried this one and it somehow managed to ruin my OS.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Did you disconnect all other HDDs before you attempted the startup repairs?

 

[sordid]

Yes, I did. Didn't make any difference though.
I reversed the drive letters to their previous state and tried again, it all doesn't help.
I don't think my Win7 can be resurrected...
Now all I would need is at least a way to access my personal folders in Win7 from either my running XP or Ubuntu - it should work in Ubuntu, shouldn't it? Then I'll have to reinstall Win7 and never ever touch that crappy piece of software Partition Wizard anymore.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I would be more inclined to believe it was operator error rather than the S/W, too many have used it successfully, including myself to do partition resizing and have never had issues, I've probably done close to 100 such operations, both on 'real' hardware and using VirtualBox and never had an issue with it.



This will help you copy out the data if need be.

How to Copy & Paste in Recovery Console on Windows 7 or Vista

 

[sordid]

Well, I used different partitioning tools over the last 15 years and all I did was shrinking one partition and growing another one.
You'd have to try very hard to make any mistakes in such a scenario - and yes, I repartitioned a few hundred times in the past as well, but obviously with different tools.

Thanks for the link - that's a pretty neat trick I wasn't aware of.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Glad I could help mate and be sure to keep us posted.

 

[gregrocker]

Boot the PW CD, set the Win7 partition active, then on the Disk tab try Rebuild MBR. If this doesn't start Win7, boot the DVD Repair console to run Startup Repair 3 separate times with reboots.

If this fails, post up a screenshot of your full Disk Mgmt drive map with listings with windows maximized and all drives plugged in. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-how-post-screenshot-seven-forums.html

You are using the boot disk, correct? One should never depend on an installed Partition Manager to do partition resizing, as at reboot the entire operation is dependent upon memory.

Strange how you keep mentioning the full product name as you give the first report of failure in hundreds of successful partitioning operations which we have helped with here using free Partition Wizard bootable CD.

 

[sordid]

Strange how you keep mentioning the full product name as you give the first report of failure in hundreds of successful partitioning operations which we have helped with here using free Partition Wizard bootable CD.

Damn, you caught me!
I'm from (Insert other random manufacturer of partitioning software here) and I only want to give PW a bad rep.
Thanks for reminding me, I almost forgot to mention which great company I'm working for.
*shaking head*

 

[gregrocker]

Sorry but I find something unsettling about a post smearing the most valuable tool we use here which reads like a press release.

I gave you known fixes for the issue you claim to have. Are you going to try them?

Why have you suddenly lost interest in fixing an install you say is ruined?

 

[sordid]

Tried everything and nothing worked.
For whatever reason, in my setup, PW is not the tool of choice - at least for me no more.

I finally gave up, saved the important data from Win7 using my Linux installation, deleted the two useless partitions and reinstalled.

 

[sordid]

BTW, PW might be a good program but like every other software that operates so close to the actual OS, there can always be problems.
Partition Wizard Home Edition 4.2.2 - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

I'm not saying that other partitioning software won't encounter the same issues here and there.
But I have used tons of partitioning programs over the last 15 years and never encountered any problems - unless I tried PW for an easy task like "shrink partition a, grow partition b" which resulted in an operating system loss for me.

It probably works great for most people but I'll leave my hands off it.

 

[gregrocker]

Are you using the boot disk, which isn't dependent upon OS files you may be trying to shrink?

Every recommendation we've made here has been for "free Partition Wizard bootable CD." I know of no case where it's failed.

I am truly sorry for your misfortune, but did you use the CD?

 

[sordid]

I did not in the first run because in the past, I never encountered problems when using the Windows versions including their pre-boot partitioning routines.
I did burn the boot DVD later though and wasn't able to recover the partition.

It's not that much of a tragedy - it'll take me quite a while until all my software is installed the way I want it to but at least I lost no valuable data like pictures and the like.