How do I disable PartitionMagic at startup?

[radhak]

I tried to resize my Dell's HDD (XP Pro) partitions with PartitionMagic 7.0, but when rebooting, the message said

"Partition Magic is preparing to apply changes, Press any key to abort"

and right after that,
"Error 100. Partition Table is bad."

At this point, the machine hangs, and I am unable to get into the machine.

Have researched, and decided that I could do better if I could just stop PartitionMAgic at startup, or stop it from trying to 'Apply Changes'. But try as I might, the "Press any key to abort" does not work.

So my question is - is there any other way I could stop PM at startup?

I managed to install Windows 2000 on an extended partition, and hence am able to see all my drives and folders.

I am willing to delete PartitionMagic completely to get out of this, but will that help, or will it make it worse? There must be some file / registry-entry that triggers PM at startup, which I could disable, maybe?

[crokett]

How are you able to get to your alternate Windows 2000 install? What is listed as options to boot from when the machine starts? You should have Windows and Partition Magic? Do you have an option to load XP? What does your boot.ini file look like?

FYI, I stopped using Partition Magic years ago. Now I use Gnome Partition Editor. A free, Linux-based partition editor that can do what PMagic can do with a lot less fuss and bother. Google it and you can download an ISO image for the bootable CD. Also, Dell does some loopy things with a recovery partition which may be the problem with PMagic.

[radhak]

At boot, it shows options to choose Win XP Pro, and below that Windows 2000.

When I select the XP Pro, it shows the XP flash screen with logo et al, then the Partition Magic screen comes up, with the 'trying to apply' for a few seconds (at which point no key works, so the 'press any key to abort' is a wasteful message). Then the error message, and the machine freezes up.

I shall definitely try out the Gnome Partition Editor once this resolves. I don't like PM taking away my control over my own machine.

[crokett]

That is what I was afraid of. Can you post your boot.ini file? If it is simply an entry in boot.ini we can fix it to get you back to XP. Otherwise it gets a little tougher.

Do you get the prompt in XP to 'press F8 for other startup options'? You can try last known good boot there

[radhak]

I am able to select the 'Last Know Good Configuration', but it gets me to the same PartitionMagic Error page.

It does allow me to select safe mode, it then asks me to select the OS version (again), and if I select XP Pro, the screen flickers, a progress bar shows up briefly at the bottom, but it goes nowhere. If I choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt, it displays a huge, long list of drivers and then just sits there.

If I select Win2000 in safe mode, it does give me that; but then I am able to get into regular win2k.

The boot.ini is just 6 lines :
[boot loader]
timeout=1
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\window s
[operationg systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\windows=Micros oft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /noexecute=optin
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\windows=Micros oft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect

[crokett]

A search out at the symatec site says this error is either a partition table problem and you need to repartition the disk to fix it, or you have removable disk (ipod, mem card, etc) attached to USB port. You need to disconnect them and try booting again. I am not sure how to disable PMagic at this point. The files that I know XP uses when it starts are system.ini, win.ini and boot.ini So PMagic may have edited one of these files.

If it is a partition table problem what I would do is get the Gparted CD, boot it, and see if it reads the partition table. I would also make a small change (resize a partition by a few bytes) and force it to rerwrite it. The risk here is losing data. Right now you haven't lost it, you just can't boot XP.

[mpc]

Reboot yet again, using F8 to bring up the WinXP boot menu. Get to a console mode/command prompt.

On your C:\ root directory look for a batch file that PartitionMagic may have built; if nothing else sort the files by date and look at the latest ones. I don't remember what PM calls it myself. You can rename this (safer than deleting in case you accidently pick a WinXP file) and restart. Or "cd \progra~1" to get to the Program Files area... do a dir looking for PowerQuest or whatever directory PM is installed in... use the "move" command to rename that to something else:
move PowerQuest PowerJunk
and try rebooting. Now the little batch file won't be able to find the main PM program so it ought to "finish" and let the machine boot normally. Once it's booted normally you can clean up the root diretory batch file and un-move the PowerJunk directory back to original... and then uninstall PM.

Many Windows programs that need to run during bootup, including Windows own install/setup stuff, use a registry key:
\HKeyLocalMachine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\RunOnce
Something like that anyway; Use RegEdit to look in there for references to PM and kill them.

Another partition program out there is "BootIt Next Generation" from Terabyte Unlimited. It runs off a diskette (remember those?) so it boots quickly. Just skip out of the "install" page when booting it, it'll go into "maintentance mode" and you'll see a partition manipulator on the menu. I used to be a big PM fan (PM 8.01) but not any more; ever since Symmantec took over PowerQuest the support has been zilch... and some WinXP disk setups (the Master File Directory aka MFD) are flagged as "corrupt" by PM 8. Baloney.

mpc

[radhak]

Resolved - sorta

First of all, the good news - i finally managed to get into my XP installation, and am able to see my programs et al as before. No re-install or wipe-and-redo.

Quite a bit of that is because of the advice given by both of you; even if not all of it was applicable directly, it made me look in the right places. Thanks for your help, and concern. 2+ days of being without my main machine has been 'educative' at best, frustrating/paralyzing at worst.

Details: win 2000's disk configuration was allowing me to see the various partitions, but not letting me see which had a problem, if any.
i disconnected all external devices like my external hdd, the printer (which had a media-reader, which could have been the problem), the scanner, etc.

At this point booting into XP started giving me an 'autocheck not found' error. Turns out my main partition had turned 'invisible' to the boot-program (how did that happen?), but i was able to use PTEDIT from powerquest to correct that.

This got me back to the PM re-boot loop. So I had this brilliant idea (inspired by David and mpc) of renaming the program XMNT2001.exe that PM was running. poof - reboot gave me the error - 'XMNT2001.exe not found', but went ahead and put me into XP!!! Sigh of relief. ( I am getting this screen every time I reboot, so I'll need to do something about it, but that's okay).

Of course, along the way I had to repair XP installation using the only disc I had - XP pro with SP1, so now I am installing all the SP2 and other updates. Happy to do that all night so long as I have my machine back!

I am convinced that PartitionMagic caused me all this problem. And till recently I was highly enamoured of it!! So it's time to look at GParted, and I also hear good things about Acronis Disk Director. Letsee.

Ok! now time to get back to my workshop...Whoopie!

[crokett]

Good news. Glad you got things straightened out. I like gparted mostly because it requires that you install nothing to use it. So you don't get the problems like you had with PMagic. Also, it is free.

[radhak]

Good news. Glad you got things straightened out. I like gparted mostly because it requires that you install nothing to use it. So you don't get the problems like you had with PMagic. Also, it is free.

Is that what the 'LiveCD' means? I should download it and write to a CD and then boot with that CD? Is the liveUSB better/easier?

[mpc]

A little more info now that it's too late to help (glad you got it straightened out)... I wanted to do some partition backups today so I used P-Magic again (I've switched to BootIt myself) and noted where it stuffs the "batch" file: c:\windows\temp\*.pqb. Not the root directory that I told you... sorry 'bout that.

mpc