Solved PC froze during repartitioning—how to proceed?

[pjfarr]

PC froze during repartitioning—how to proceed?

I've been running a dual XP/7 system for the last several months with XP installed on the first partition and Win7 on the second of the same hard disk.

Since I rarely boot into XP anymore I wanted to take several GB's off of the XP partition and allot it to the Win7 partition. I know how to do this and made the changes using Partition Magic. Once I okay-ed the changes I rebooted and watched the DOS screen as the changes were going through. It got to 67% and halted. After 20 minutes it's still hasn't budged.

I'm starting to sweat.

I'm afraid to do a hard shutdown since the partitioning wasn't complete. What are my options? Am I screwed if I shut down and reboot?

 

[seavixen32]

Many of us use Partition Wizard fir our disk management and get on well with it. This tutorial has all the details.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

Resizing a partition can take some time if it's got a lot of data on it so I'd give it a bit longer yet.

If all else fails, you'll have no option but to reboot into whichever boot disc you're using.

You may find this tutorial useful too.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/210983-dual-boot-delete-os.html

 

[pjfarr]

So if I shut it down, what are my chances of a successful reboot? What can happen if partitioning is interrupted before completion?

 

[seavixen32]

If you restart your computer before the boot disc has completed partitioning your drive, it should just boot back into Windows.

In this scenario, don't select the one-time boot option to boot from the CD drive, just let Windows boot normally.

 

[pjfarr]

Okay, I shut it down and rebooted. A DOS screen came up saying Windows is having trouble booting and asked if i wanted to launch Start Up Repair. I said yes. It ran a repair thingy for several minutes and then said sorry, couldn't fix it. I rebooted again. Then the Partition Magic screen came up and it looked for a sec like it was going to pick up where it left off, but then it threw an unknown error and wouldn't go any further. I rebooted yet again.

I was surprised—and extremely relieved—to see my desktop popup, complete with all my icons and customizations as if nothing had happened. I checked the Disk Manager and it appeared the partition changes I made did somehow go through. There was just a few GB's of unallotted space that weren't there before. So it seems like everything is okay.

Thanks for your help!

 

[seavixen32]

You're very welcome.

It sounds like the Startup Repair fixed things for you. I don't know whether you were aware, but it's necessary on occasions to run Startup Repair three times with a reboot between each attempt.

Anyway, I'm very pleased we seem to have solved your problem so thanks for the update.

I'd appreciate it if you mark the thread as solved.

 

[pjfarr]

No, I didn't know that bit about running Startup Repair 3 times. Although it did say it may reboot the system a few times during the repair it never did and just said it couldn't fix the errors. Thanks for that info!

This forum has gotten me out of some jams and I always appreciate the people willing to give their time. Thanks again.

 

[seavixen32]

No problem, just pleased we got you out of a hole.