BTMagic problem

Message

Rex · #1 Post by **Rex** » Sat May 14, 2005 2:14 am

Hi there,

Until recently, I have been dual booting my T22 with W98SE and W2k. Having gotten W2k running nicely, I deleted and formatted the W98 partition with PartitionMagic 8.

Although I have (kind of) sorted things out, when booting, I get a "Boot Magic cannot find the BTMagic.img file. Press any key to continue" message. I have reinstalled BM in an attempt to uninstall it, but as BM is part of PM, there is no uninstall facility.

Obviously the booting system is looking for the image file, but I cannot find where this message is coming from. If it was from Autoexec.bat (for example) I would edit the file, but W2k does not seem to have and autoexec.bat.

Have thought of formating C:/ and restoring with my Ghost image, but I would assume that the image also includes this message!

Any advice on how to get rid of this annoying message would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance,

Phil_C · #2 Post by **Phil_C** » Sun May 15, 2005 4:16 pm

Unless PM 8 is different than PM 7, Boot Magic is a separate utility that you install. (Don't confuse it with PQ Boot, which does the same thing, but only once each time you run it.) It should have been uninstalled or disabled before you deleted the Win 98 partition, if that's where you had originally installed it.

Can you restore the Win 98 partition, then install, disable, and uninstall Boot Magic? Then you can delete the partition again.

I don't know if there is a shortcut around this procedure.

Rex · #3 Post by **Rex** » Sun May 15, 2005 11:58 pm

Thanks for your reply. I guess I did have BootMagic on the W98 partition.

Sounds reasonable but don't know how I will fix the problem now. Have moved W2k, which was the second C:/ partition, to the first C:/ partition and merged the space left from removing W98 into D:/

Am still using PM8 with W2k, and have tried to install BM. Can have either BM for Windows or DOS, but there does not appear to be an uninstall utility.

Rex

Rex · #4 Post by **Rex** » Mon May 16, 2005 12:00 am

Phil,

Thinking about my reply after I have sent it, may be I could restore W98 to C:/ using the image that I made, remove BootMagic and then restore W2k for another image.

Do you think that would work when there would only be one OS?

Rex

Phil_C · #5 Post by **Phil_C** » Mon May 16, 2005 4:10 pm

If you could restore the Win 98 partition, you can then install Boot Magic and set it up as you had it previously. Reboot to Win 98.

Disable Boot Magic. Reboot.

If you can uninstall BM, do so. (I don't remember if you can do this, but I think so.)

You will then need to use PQBoot to point to the Win2K partition for the next boot. (You can also boot from a floppy or bootable CD with PQBoot on it, but that can get more complicated.) If you boot into Win2K, you are good to go. You should then be able to delete the Win 98 partition again.

I'm putting this all down from memory. I haven't used BM for a couple of years, so I hope this is correct information. PM and BM are great utilities, but I wish Powerquest supplied more detailed scenarios for this type of thing. I was caught by surprise a couple of times by the way certain similar problems popped up for me. In retrospect, it all made sense, but the logic was not easily visualized beforehand.

Phil_C · #6 Post by **Phil_C** » Mon May 16, 2005 4:12 pm

Rex wrote:Phil,

Thinking about my reply after I have sent it, may be I could restore W98 to C:/ using the image that I made, remove BootMagic and then restore W2k for another image.

Do you think that would work when there would only be one OS?

Rex

This I don't know. It would be better to have both OS partitions present.

Rex · #7 Post by **Rex** » Tue May 17, 2005 1:02 am

Phil,

In my reply yesterday, I thought that I had BM installed. I was incorrect; it was PQBoot. Hence no uninstall utility!

I have installed BM to my sole C:/ OS, run it and then uninstalled it. I set the show image time to zero and the computer booted into W2k with no problems. But I don't actually want (or need) BM any longer. Uninstalled it (there is a utility) but the start-up 'BTmagic.img error' message is still there.

I will try again with PQ installed and follow your instructions regarding pointing to the OS with PQ.

Reinstalling w98 could pose a challenge as the computer was set up with C:/ (W98) or C:/ (W2k) These could be hidden/unhidden with BM to make one active. Other partitions have stuff on them. Having removed W98, I was left with the first partition (previously W98) set as J: Have managed to use my W2k image to overwrite the J:/ (now C:/ on the first partition) which made the second partition J:/ (following this?) Then merged J and D (My Docs.)

What I don't understand is that the error message is being generated from somewhere, like an autoexec.bat or config.sys file. But these don't seem present on W2k. So where does the message come from? If I can find it, may be I can delete it.

Rex

.

Phil_C · #8 Post by **Phil_C** » Tue May 17, 2005 3:34 pm

I think BM puts some kind of pointer in the boot sector. Depending on what was the physical order of OS partitions on the disk, deleting the OS partition where BM was installed may not remove some stuff from the boot sector.

At least that's what seemed to happen with me. I had the same type of setup as you, where only one of the OS partitions was visible and the other hidden. You might want to try calling Powerquest, or Symantec I think it is now. Maybe you'll get lucky and find someone who can solve this cleanly.

Rex · #9 Post by **Rex** » Tue May 17, 2005 4:42 pm

Phil,

Thanks for the advice. Have found other sites from a Google search with a similar problem.

They recommend uninstalling BM then doing a reg search (a couple of times) and removing every BM related item. Reinstall BM and turn it off! Then uninstall it again.

Will give that a try.

Rex

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