Windows won't start up after using Paragon Partition Manager

mmm1st · Joined: Oct 14, 2008 Posts: 3

Hi, i have a Toshiba satellite running windows vista home basic 32bit,
i was trying to shrink the C drive and i couldn't shrink it less than
a certain extent with the windows manager, so i tried using paragon
partition manager to resize it, so i selected the drive D to be
expanded then the drive C to take the free space from and i applied
the changes, it asked me to restart, after restarting a screen of the
progress was showing and progress is moving normally untill it
finished and restarted by it self, after restarting i got a black
screen and it says "windows failed to start, a recent hardware or
software might be the cause" and i have two options either to Launch
startup repair or start windows normally, i tried both, when i launch
startup repair i get on the bottom of the black screen loading
files.... then a normal startup logo shows and a get an error message
called "system recovery option" and it says the installed program
cannot start. Click ok to turn off the computer. Sad

i tried starting on safe mode and it didn't work too, it shows the
black screen with loading files thing then it shuts down suddenly and
start again.. So plzzzzzzzzzzz can any one help me and tell me what to
do?? Sad

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1508 Location: London

Oh dear,
I hoe you have resolved this an easy way
This happened to me and it needed both a reformat and a reinstall and I needed to shrink the partition by about 1kb ( which seemed to d the trick, I think because that 1kb was corrupted and unreadable in some mysterious way - I assume it had contained the Master File Table ).

Sorry,
Terry

mmm1st · Joined: Oct 14, 2008 Posts: 3

It's OK bcoz i solved the problem and this how i did it,
First step, what I did is i took the hard disk out from the laptop and i connected to as an external hard to my other laptop which I'm running Windows XP on it, and i have Power Quest Partition Magic on it, when i connected the hard disk at first the D drive was there with all its content and the C drive also was there But when i click on C drive it says drive not formatted properly do you want to format drive? i clicked NO then i opened Power Quest Partition Magic and once it started it detected some errors on the drive and asked if i want it to be fixed, i clicked YES and I got few other errors like this I clicked yes on all of them, after that i disconnected the hard disk and reconnected it and i was able to open the C drive too and everything looked normal in there..
Step two i put the hard disk back to the laptop that i got the problem on the first time, i powered on and i got the Toshiba welcome screen and after that the Error message and vista error fixing thingy, i clicked fix, and it took about 10 to 15 minutes and then it said problem was not fully fixed,, I restarted and the computer it started normally, I went to control panel and removed the Paragon Partition Manager, then i clicked my computer, the D drive was not there, only the C drive, so i had to go to Manage and went to disk management and D drive was there but no drive letter was assigned to it, I deleted the drive and made it as unallocated space, then restarted the computer, and went to manage again and made a new D drive from the unallocated space..
And everything was back to normal...

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1136 Location: Central FL, USA

Just for future reference.....there are many so called "Partition xxxxxx" programs out there and not all are properly written with built in safeguards.

Most people get into trouble using partitioning programs because they don't fully understand the process.

Lets say that you have only one partition and you want to create a second one, for a place to store your Stuff.

First you have to shrink the C: partition to create some FREE SPACE.
Always leave the C: partition at least twice the size of the installed data.

Then you 'Create' a new partition in that free space and format it.
For general file storage that new partition should be formatted as FAT-32.

Even following all the proper steps, "Paragon Partition Manager" did the same thing to my own HD. (left it un-bootable)

I restored my latest Ghost Backup Image File and put everything back the way it should be. In rare cases, the HD boot sector is so damaged that the drive has to be completely reformatted to fix the problem.
That happened to me when I ran a defrag program called the "Defraggler".
It appeared to run OK, but after the defrag, that HD never booted up again.
Even doing a Ghost restore couldn't fix it.
I wound up doing my Ghost restore to a brand new HD and using my old drive for a data storage disk.

So beware of any program that's going to mess around with your HD structure.
Doing a backup or "Clone" of your HD to another drive, before you start experimenting with strange programs, is always a good idea.

Good Luck and Happy Holidays!

The Doctor Cool

tbernstein · Joined: May 16, 2003 Posts: 1508 Location: London

Hmm!

"Even following all the proper steps, "Paragon Partition Manager" did the same thing to my own HD. (left it un-bootable) "

There seems to be a pattern here.
Paragon worked fine when I had an XP machine.
And it worked fine on my Vista machine's data partitions.
But when I used it on my C: drive..... well, as above!
Either it doesn't like Vista or it doesn't like system partions or the combination of both. (My guess is the latter)

But Vista's built-in disk manager is strange. Just because you shrink a partition it doesn't seem to mean that you can expand the one next to it.
It seems to be flexible on the left, but not the right.