Emergency Help Needed!

[Keith Russell]

I posted this to the help_and_support group this morning, and haven't
received a response. It appears that that group may not be as active as
this one. I apologize for anyone who saw it there, but I'm getting more and
more desperate!

For the first time ever, PartitionMagic has made my Windows system
unbootable 8-(.

I was resizing my c: partition. Halfway through, PM failed with:

Error 1517. Required file attribute missing.

Now, when I try to boot, I get a BootMagic screen, which does have a
Windows XP choice. However, selecting XP quickly scrolls diagnostic
messages on the screen and fails.

When I run PM from the CD now and check the c: partition, it shows me a
critical error 46: seek error. It shows the partition as completely full,
with no unused space. All my partitions are listed, but what was originally
my c: drive is unnamed, and the only lettered partition is the BootMagic
partition, which is called c:.

The PowerQuest (now Symantec, unfortunately) Web page says to run chkdsk,
but I can't figure out how to do this. I created PM and BootMagic floppies,
but all they give me is DR-DOS, which of course, doesn't have chkdsk, and
finds only the BootMagic Partition.

I tried booting to the recovery console from the XP CD. It asks me:

Which Windows installation would you like me to log into?

However, it lists only:

1: D:\WINNT

(I have Windows 2000 and Lindows installed to logical partitions.)

Is there any way I can run chkdsk on my c: partition? Is there any way out?
Or am I going to have to reformat the partition and reinstall XP?

Thanks for your help. I'm desperate at this point.

 

[Brian Coats]

Xp may think it on a different partition. What I would try is
disable the boot manager. Then enable at the same time.

Another thing that could of happen is lindows change the partition
type id of the xp drive. If you have lindows boot cd. Use that to
change the partition id. I not sure how to do this.

If that fails. Get a windows 98se boot disk from
http://www.bootdisk.com/ make sure fdisk is on it.

The disable the boot manager . Boot floppy. Type fdisk say y to all.
Check to see if it show xp partition active. If active type
fdisk /mbr

(fdisk may report it as NTFS partition or a Non-dos partition)

Now if not active. Change it 1st. The reboot with floppy in the
drive. Check again to see if it show xp partition active. If active
type fdisk /mbr

Note this will work even if your partition is format as ntfs. I had
a similar problem.

now enable the boot manager .

Some people will say not the use fdisk /mbr but I disagree with that.
It seems to me that fixes a lot of problems. If can’t access windows
or lindows anyway. It wont hurt. However, You may need to repair
lindows boot record after doing this. It seems all partition
programs have trouble with Linux distributions

Brian