Lost drive letter

[Rex]

Hi there,

Not sure if this is a W2k or PartitionMagic problem, so probably incorrectly, I will also post it to the Software forum.

Have been repairing an IBM T20 with new bits. Used the old hd which had W98SE as the OS. As I want W2k (NTFS) I used PM8 to add another OS. Now the HD had three partitions (C; D; and E,) with C having two OS's, one hidden and the other active. W2k was booting without any problems and I could access the Japanese software that I was installing for my wife.

Now to get rid of W98, and use the space for C: Again, using PM8, I converted the W98 hidden section to NTFS and merged the two. Everything appeared to go well until finally rebooting. Zilch; not even a system prompt.

Using the PM8 rescue disk (which is booting to W98) I see that the drive letters have changed. The new (enlarged) partition is coloured as one with the drive letter as * active, NTFS and * hidden. But My Documents is now C: and the third partition D.

I probably still have the W2k as NTFS but no with drive letter, I cannot access it. PM8 gives an "Error 1516; partition improperly dismounted" message. I have Googled but the various answers are not changing the drive letters. What I want is to remap the drive letters but cannot do that as the PM rescue disk do not seem to have that option.

Really grateful for any advice; I can't even reformat the partition as it does not have a drive letter.

Many thanks,

Rex

[Sportler2k3]

Hi there,

Is ur boot partition set to active and primary?
if not u can set this with pm8!

or

Goto: http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/
type 1516 in the search field.

use the first result it tells u how to handle the error.

[Rex]

Thanks for your reply.

What happens is this; on booting my T20, the IBM splash appears then I get a flashing cursor on a blank screen, nothing else.

Using the Partition Magic rescue disk, what I have is (from the left) a large mauve bar, and two yellow bars (C and D) indicating the three partitions.

The mauve bar is labelled *NTFS/Primary/Active AND *FAT32/Primary/Hidden. This is because I had both W98SEE and W2k on the same primary partition. 98 was hidden so I was booting into W2k (NTFS) which is the OS I was building.

Decided to merge the two, so converted W98 to NTFS (which deleted everything) and merged. The result is now the mauve bar!

This mauve bar probably has W2k on, but since it has no drive letters (only * and *) I can do zilch. The Symantec site suggestions are no good because they rely upon a drive letter of Chkdsk a partition.

Interestingly, I took an Acronis True Image of C: (W98SE) before installing the second OS (using PM8) so presumably can restore the old image. ATI shows three partitions C: (NTFS); D: (My Docs): and E: (Image) which is not what PM shows.

The PM options for the mauve bar are limited. Think I can make it active or hidden but there would be little point as the * NTFS section is listed as active and if I make it hidden, it will not boot (and it is not booting at the moment.)

I guess the BIOS is finding C: but since this has been remapped (My Docs) there is no OS on that partition.

Hope you can make sense of this explanation.

Rex

[dsvochak]

It's possible that one of the "fixes" listed here may work

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

[Sportler2k3]

Goto: http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/
type 1516 in the search field.

use the first result it tells u how to handle the error.

Did u try this solution?

(Symantec bought Powerquest)

[BarkingPerci]

I have no idea if it will serve you any better, but it's worth a shot. Try the GParted live CD. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ Linux-based partitioning tool which by all accounts is fantastic and gives PM8 a run for it's money (emphasis on the $). I don't know if it allows you to change partition letters or if it's what you need.

Good luck it sounds like a nasty problem.

[Rex]

Gentlemen,

Many thanks for the advice. I have tried the Symantec site and all their solutions assume that the partition in question has a drive letter. Chkdsk, etc need a drive letter to work. No drive letter, no solution.

Just downloaded a copy of gparted but have no idea what to do with it. My working computer does not recognize the extensions. Do I burn the unzipped files to a cd and it will boot into the Linux GUI?

Rex

[BarkingPerci]

It's an iso file (a disk image) which you'll need to burn to a CD then you will boot to that CD. There are many tutorials around I'm sure, but if you check out dl.tv Ep 75 they do a short how-to (video > text )

http://dl.tv/blogs/digitallifetv/archiv ... 15040.aspx
(middle flash segment)

*they also talk about Gparted earlier in the show and what it can do.

If/when that doesn't help you (I'm a pessimist about such problems) you may want to consider something like Spinrite - http://www.kickstartnews.com/reviews/ut ... te_v6.html - it will cost you some $ and I've never used it and I'd love to know if there is a free alternative, but I've heard some people hype it as a cure-all for Hard Drives while some poo poo it.

[Rex]

Gentlemen,

Many thanks for all the advice. Unfortunately, nothing seems to have worked, although I did not try Gparted. Since I was in the process of rebuilding the OS and hard rive, I decided not to spend any more time and took a sledge hammer to my attempts.

Restored C: (W98SE) from an image, which restored the OS to C:, deleted the OS and installed W2k with NTFS formating.

So now back to where I wanted to be.

Rex