Used Partition Magic, now unable to boot. May have re-labelled C:/ More details inside!

rollojarvis

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Okay so exactly what happened:


  • ■Opened partition magic 8, error came up with it being incompatable with win7, I decided to open it anyway
    ■A number of dialogue boxes appeared saying Partition Magic has noticed a mislabeling of a sector (or something along those lines) asking if I would like it to fix it. I initally said no, but this caused an error and the program not to open, so I clicked yes. Everything seems good.
    ■The program never actually opens, but I get a BSOD
    ■Upon restart I get a windows could not start error, and a request to start normally (doesnt work) or use startup repair (get an error: Windows could not fix this problem automatically)
    ■I have opened the command prompt, and run the fixboot commands, but to no avail.
    ■I get an error "could not find the file specified" when I open system restore, so this is not an option.
    ■I have noticed that the command prompt begins "X:/Windows/System32/" implying that the C: drive has been relabelled to X:

Any ideas? Thanks guys, I will make sure to help out on here when I can as payback
 
Hi

Powerquest Partition magic was last updated about 2002 Time of XP
It does not know about Windows Vista & 7 with hidden bootmanager partition etc

You need a bootable Windows System repair disk

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/create-a-system-repair-disc

if Win 7 sp1 64 bit find a friend with PC same Windows version /servicepacklevel / 32bit or 64bit and make a system repair disk to use on your PC

read up on how to use it. Try automated repair first




If boot drive is X: it implies a Windows Pre Installation Environment (on a recovery partition) has loaded rather than your old C: partition

best of luck
 

rollojarvis

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Thanks, I have just created a USB bootable repair disk, but unfortunately I get the same error "Startup Repair cannot repair this computer automatically".

Under diagnostic and repair details, I have:

Root cause found:
Boot configuration is corrupt.

Repair action: partition table repair
Result: failed. Error code = 0x490

Any other ideas?
 
Hi

Rather than use Partition Magic (by Powerquest before being sold to Symantec and too old to cope with modern OS after XP)

I use Parted Magic (Linux live CD or USB)
This has a Partition Editor which has the look and feel of Partition Magic

It also has TestDisk which can repair corrupted or missing Partition information.

There maybe other tools on Parted Magic which may be useful and you maybe able to access the hard disk and backup data to a external USB or eSATA hard disk before running TestDisk

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=programs#.Ubd_W9iE62U

best of luck

Mike Barnes