PC hanged while resizing partition C, help please

[alex5908]

Hi there,

Yesterday I tried to increase partition C with Easeus. I did it successfully a couple of months ago. Today (after 16 hours of processing) the PC still reads 55% total progress, 10% current operation, 100% preparing operation.
Please help!

 

[Maguscreed]

My guess is the drive was rather heavily fragmented when you ran the process.

 

[alex5908]

Do you think I should wait for another 24 hours?

 

[Maguscreed]

I honestly don't know, canceling it could be risky if it's locked in moving some piece of important data.

 

[MilesAhead]

Do you think I should wait for another 24 hours?

Do you have a backup image that can restore things to the status quo?
Presumably C: is the OS partition and D: would just be some data. I don't see why it would take 16 hours to move the stuff on D: so you could give some of it to C:.

If you don't have an image backup you might try something like Partition Wizard. If you look around you should be able to find the bootable CD version that has all features enabled.

Hard to advise you if I don't know what the state of your backups are.

 

[alex5908]

No backup whatsoever. That's the problem. I was sick and tired of waiting and stopped the PC. Windows tried to repair itself but failed. I opened the HDD as an external drive. Nothing has changed - even the size of the partition C remained untouched. Now what shall I do to repair the system?

 

[MilesAhead]

What happens when you try to boot it?

At this point you probably have nothing to lose trying the partition recovery tool from the Partition Wizard boot CD:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/partition-wizard-bootable-cd.html

I don't mess around with my partitions very often. I used to back in the Partition Magic 5 days. But I've heard on a lot of boards that Partition Magic is one of the best free partition programs you can get for Windows. Also the boot CD has features from the Partition Wizard Pro version that aren't included in the personal edition. I'd try the partition recovery. You may just get lucky and be able to copy the backup MBR over the one that got hosed.

I wouldn't keep messing around with the same software that had a problem. Time to move on.

 

[dsperber]

At this point you probably have nothing to lose trying the partition recovery tool from the Partition Wizard boot CD:

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot computer directly to manage partition.

I don't mess around with my partitions very often. I used to back in the Partition Magic 5 days. But I've heard on a lot of boards that Partition Magic is one of the best free partition programs you can get for Windows. Also the boot CD has features from the Partition Wizard Pro version that aren't included in the personal edition.

Just in passing...

Partition Magic, which was originally from Powerquest, was ultimately acquired by Symantec... who then proceeded to do pretty much nothing to the product to "modernize" it. I have their version 8 (and have had all previous versions), but it won't work beyond WinXP and won't work in Win7.

Also even under WinXP it no longer supported very large modern drives (e.g. 1TB and 2Tb), nor is it usable under Win7.

Symantec has finally killed the product. It's no longer on their list of products for sale.

In fact, I speculate that the original author (or maintainer) of Partition Magic must have gone to work for Symantec at the time of the Powerquest acquisition. He is now apparently no longer with the Symantec company, if my further speculation is correct, and actually appears to have walked out the door with the Partition Magic software in his briefcase (or maybe he was allowed to do so by Symantec, since they were purging the product from their family).

He then appears to have "modernized" the product as it should have always been, started his own company and web site for theproduct, and renamed the product to now be "Partition Wizard" as you mention. I myself use the v5.2 Home Edition which is perfectly adequate.

And, thankfully, Partition Wizard now DOES support large drives, and now DOES run perfectly under Win7.

It also has a standalone boot drive it can create (from ISO image), that allows you to use all features of the product in cases of true disaster recovery, or complete formatting and partitioning of a brand new hard drive to be used as C/boot.


Partition Wizard really IS Partition Magic, but made modern and better and with more features. It's a terrific (and invaluable, for me) tool, and runs under WinXP, Win7, standalone boot, etc.

Personally I'd like to see just a few GUI issues improved, but otherwise I can't say anything bad about it. Wonderful product. Does exactly what it is supposed to do.

 

[alex5908]

Is there a chance to revive (restore) the previous version of Win 7?

 

[dsperber]

Is there a chance to revive (restore) the previous version of Win 7?

Only if you have taken a "system image" backup of your C-drive to a second and different drive location.

Then you'd be able to boot from the Win7 installation (or Win7 system repair which you may have created for just such a situation) CD and go into recovery, re-format your primary C-drive, and do a 100% restore of whatever was on that last "system image" you'd taken.

You'd be back in business within an hour, having lost nothing on the entire C-drive from the contents of that most recent "system image" backup you'd taken.

That's why "system image" is such a convenient and powerful way to take a backup of your C-drive. You should probably do it weekly... but to a second local hard drive location or a removable drive.

 

[alex5908]

[

Only if you have taken a "system image" backup of your C-drive to a second and different drive location.[/QUOTE]

What are the programs to make system image?

 

[dsperber]

What are the programs to make system image?

It's built into Win7.

control panel -> system and security -> backup and restore

On the left side of the "backup and restore" dialog is the item "create a system image". Click on it, and follow the wizard steps.

 

[MilesAhead]

At this point you probably have nothing to lose trying the partition recovery tool from the Partition Wizard boot CD:

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot computer directly to manage partition.

I don't mess around with my partitions very often. I used to back in the Partition Magic 5 days. But I've heard on a lot of boards that Partition Magic is one of the best free partition programs you can get for Windows. Also the boot CD has features from the Partition Wizard Pro version that aren't included in the personal edition.

Just in passing...

Partition Magic, which was originally from Powerquest, was ultimately acquired by Symantec... who then proceeded to do pretty much nothing to the product to "modernize" it. I have their version 8 (and have had all previous versions), but it won't work beyond WinXP and won't work in Win7.

Also even under WinXP it no longer supported very large modern drives (e.g. 1TB and 2Tb), nor is it usable under Win7.

Symantec has finally killed the product. It's no longer on their list of products for sale.

In fact, I speculate that the original author (or maintainer) of Partition Magic must have gone to work for Symantec at the time of the Powerquest acquisition. He is now apparently no longer with the Symantec company, if my further speculation is correct, and actually appears to have walked out the door with the Partition Magic software in his briefcase (or maybe he was allowed to do so by Symantec, since they were purging the product from their family).

He then appears to have "modernized" the product as it should have always been, started his own company and web site for theproduct, and renamed the product to now be "Partition Wizard" as you mention. I myself use the v5.2 Home Edition which is perfectly adequate.

And, thankfully, Partition Wizard now DOES support large drives, and now DOES run perfectly under Win7.

It also has a standalone boot drive it can create (from ISO image), that allows you to use all features of the product in cases of true disaster recovery, or complete formatting and partitioning of a brand new hard drive to be used as C/boot.


Partition Wizard really IS Partition Magic, but made modern and better and with more features. It's a terrific (and invaluable, for me) tool, and runs under WinXP, Win7, standalone boot, etc.

Personally I'd like to see just a few GUI issues improved, but otherwise I can't say anything bad about it. Wonderful product. Does exactly what it is supposed to do.

I don't see the point of the history lesson. I mentioned PM5 only to give the poster an idea that it's been awhile since I did a lot with multiple partitions. Partition Wizard is what I suggested using. You say it works on Vista and W7 so what's the point other than confusing the issue?

Nobody suggested using PM5 to do the job.

If the system is not bootable the best chance of bailing out is partition recovery. Other than that, save the data off the clean install.

 

[MilesAhead]

Hi there,

Yesterday I tried to increase partition C with Easeus. I did it successfully a couple of months ago. Today (after 16 hours of processing) the PC still reads 55% total progress, 10% current operation, 100% preparing operation.
Please help!

btw, esp. where you are talking a scrambled system it would save a lot of time filling in the system specs. W7 Home Preimum 64 bit tells almost nothing as to the remedies at your disposal. It's likely preinstalled, could have "restore" or "repair" CD, Windows install DVD? We have no way to know.

 

[SIW2]

Actually , I thought it was quite interesting story about PW origins - I was under the impression it is a chinese designer, website based in Canada - who knows?

As Miles says , try a partition recovery with PW - it's pretty good at that .

 

[alex5908]

I tried to boot from the same HDD and it loaded Windows. All programs work. I wanted to make a backup but Windows backup failed two times in row. It asked to check the disc. I did and everything was OK. What is the best program to create a backup?

 

[dsperber]

I tried to boot from the same HDD and it loaded Windows. All programs work.

Well, it would then seem that your hard drive is not corrupted in terms of its partition boundary box. Somehow, whatever potential damage might have occurred during your failed attempt at enlarging the C-partition either didn't occur after all, or if there's true damage it just hasn't impacted your ability to boot to Windows and run programs.

Let's not be too overly optimistic here, as clearly your partition enlargement process did not complete normally so you said.

I wanted to make a backup

I suggested "system image", not "backup" (which is a different thing entirely).

but Windows backup failed two times in row. It asked to check the disc.

Aha... never be too overly optimistic when something seemingly disastrous has occurred, and you have no explanation nor solution yet.

What actual error did Windows Backup give you?

Is your hard drive formatted as FAT32 or NTFS?

I did and everything was OK. What is the best program to create a backup?

Look back up at my simple steps to create a "system image", which is what you want as your total backup of the C-drive.

"Windows Backup" is a different process, though it does provide selective restore/recovery of folders/files, something which "system image" does not. But it's "system image" which can completely restore your entire C-drive including the operating system, boot sectors, etc., and is your genuine disaster recovery for Windows.

 

[dsperber]

It is still recommended that you download and install a copy of Partition Wizard (version 5.2, home edition... it's free). I know nothing about Easeus, but Partition Wizard program is probably identical in purpose. It can be used to resize/move partitions, etc., and I've never had it fail me, whether running under Windows or running standalone (booted from its CD).

You can use its "check file system" function to check the integrity of what Easeus left you. Even though you said you could boot to Windows, and run programs, you also tried to run a Windows Backup and got some kind of error message advising you to "check the disk" (for integrity, presumably). You said you did, and got no errors, and yet Windows Backup must have complained about something for some reason... though you've yet to find it.

Might as well use another tool to "check file system", and Partition Wizard is another such tool.

And once you get your "system image" taken (so that you can at least go back to what you have, in the event of a serious problem), you can then try enlarging your C-partition again, but this time use Partition Wizard to do it. Assuming you have at least one other partition (D?) on the same physical hard drive you're going to have to shrink that other partition (leaving free space at the front), and then you'll be able to enlarge the C-partition to pick up that newly available free space. Partition Wizard can do this all, in one consecutive series of operations.

 

[alex5908]

Is your hard drive formatted as FAT32 or NTFS?

It's NTFS.