Cannot boot after using Partition Magic

[Colinlam]

Hi, my young nephew has tried to separate his system from his data and it's
gone horribly wrong and he cannot boot. I advised him to get a Bart PE disc
to see what's on the drive.

He had/has over a 100 gig of data and he didn't make a backup.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi, my young nephew has tried to separate his system from his data and it's
gone horribly wrong and he cannot boot. I advised him to get a Bart PE disc
to see what's on the drive.

He had/has over a 100 gig of data and he didn't make a backup.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

You need to povide as many details as you can if you
want some sound advice from respondents, e.g.
- How far does the boot process go?
- What messages do you see on the screen?
- What can you see on the disk when booting with a Bart PE CD?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi, my young nephew has tried to separate his system from his data
and it's gone horribly wrong and he cannot boot. I advised him to get
a Bart PE disc to see what's on the drive.

He had/has over a 100 gig of data and he didn't make a backup.

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

Plrease explain exactly how he tried to do this.

 

[Colinlam]

Hi, I can only speak to him on the phone and what I gather is that when he
boots he gets to the screen which gives him the options to Safe Boot, Last
Good Configuration etc. Whichever he chooses fails but I'm not sure what
message , if any, he gets.

He has not tried Bart PE yet I left it with him to try.

I was wondering whether this is good advice or if any of you has anything
else to suggest.

 

[Don MI]

Hi, I can only speak to him on the phone and what I gather is that when he
boots he gets to the screen which gives him the options to Safe Boot, Last
Good Configuration etc. Whichever he chooses fails but I'm not sure what
message , if any, he gets.

He has not tried Bart PE yet I left it with him to try.

I was wondering whether this is good advice or if any of you has anything
else to suggest.

Symantec Technical Support: http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/

You will need the kind of information being asked for here to use the
automatic system. However, you may find something of use in the knowledge
base.

If you son has excess to another computer, the Partition Magic 8 has
extensive technical information under English Doc folder. The files are
uncompressed *.pdf. Insert the CD and hold down the shift key to prevent
autorun and he can access the documentation with Adobe Reader. One
suggestion under failure to boot, which appears to apply to Windows 9X
systems is to run sys.com to correct errors in some Windows 9X system files
for FAT partitions.

If your son uses the Partition Magic 8 CD {or Rescue Disks} to boot, he will
have access to some disk utilities and problem help. However, he may need
help from someone to use this support effectively.

Don

 

[John Doe]

Hi, I can only speak to him on the phone and what I gather is that
when he boots he gets to the screen which gives him the options to
Safe Boot, Last Good Configuration etc. Whichever he chooses fails
but I'm not sure what message , if any, he gets.

He has not tried Bart PE yet I left it with him to try.

I was wondering whether this is good advice or if any of you has
anything else to suggest.

He doesn't know how to use PartitionMagic and messed up his hard
drive. So you left him with another utility CD that he doesn't know
how to use. All the while, he has 100 GB worth of data on the hard
drive and no backup.

If the 100 GB worth of files are in fact important, stop what you're
doing and find someone who knows how to clone the hard drive.

Disk managers are like power tools. You can do lots of stuff quickly
but you can also destroy things. The neat thing about computer stuff
is that you can make a copy before you start hacking it. Next time
he'll know.

 

[Colinlam]

That was what I was wondering. I just thought with the Bart disk he could
take a look without doing any further damage and see if the data was still
there. I had no idea he was attempting this and had I known I would have
given the usual advice "Do not attempt anything without a backup"