Deleted PQSERVICE...Now what?!? **HELP!!**

I think I may have screwed up royally!! I have (i think) just enough computer knowledge to be dangerous, so here goes...

I recently bought the Acer Aspire 5004WLMi. I read on the forums that the PQSERVICE partition was basically a hard disk image of the recovery cd's that came with the laptop, and I wanted to get rid of it, because I figured if I ever needed to restore, I could just use the cd's. Plus, I was planning on installing XP Pro, so I wouldn't need the PQSERVICE partition for that either.

I installed Norton Partition Magic 8.0, first of all, when I launched it the first time, it gave me an error 116, saying that the partition has different CHS and LBA numbers...blah, blah...sorry, I don't exactly know all the wording. Anyways, it gave me the option to fix it, I said yes, and it said success. So, then it gives me the drive map, showing the ~3 gb PQSERVICE partition (FAT), and the 2 other partitions, c: and D: both FAT32. So I selected PQSERVICE partition and deleted it. then I restarted. And the horror begins...

A DOS-like screen came up and said: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows root>\system32\hal.dll Please reinstall a copy of the above file. Well, I had no idea how to reinstall this file, where to get it or anything, so I decided to run PM8 from the CD.

I put in PM8 and tried to boot from the cd. I selected partition magic, it began booting, and then it says mouse driver not detected -- mouse not detected, and it just hung there, would not progress further. I plugged in a USB mouse and it did the same thing. There are no PS/2 ports on the laptop, so that's out.

So now, I decide to restore from the CD's. I pop in the System cd and it begins the process, then requests the first recovery cd. I put that in, the Acer Recovery Tool launches, and then a window pops up saying: Usage Error 11086-Not enough room on target partion. Then, the screen says: Please remove the Recovery CD, put in the System CD, and then press ok. The system will reboot and then copy files from the CD. And then it begins a vicious circle, doing the same errors and requests over and over.

Please, if anyone knows how I can fix this...Please help me out!!!

 

I would make a bootable cd (win98 boot cd) with fdisk on it (hopefully you have another computer or can use someone else's) and delete all the partitions, then put in your xp pro disc and tell it to format it with ntfs and continue to load windows. Get the drivers you need from the Acer site, and you should be good to go.

 

Hi, try to edit the "C:\boot.ini" File.
In my case (i still have pqservice partition) "boot.ini" look like this:
"default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS"
In your case "partition(2)" is wrong (you dont have pqservice now), so change it: "partition(1)"
I hope it works (no garanty )

 

The problem is you have deleted the partition that was phisically the first (active, bootable) partition on disk. Your C: was in fact the second volume on disk. It was never bootable. It worked just because you have had that other service partition. Now NTFS or FAT tables still hold the wrong info about the part number volumes and cannot boot. Recovery CDs search for the hidden system partition, and don't work.
I had the same issue on my asus and even though partition manager said everything was ok and even expanded my C: partiton (added the recovery space to the C it was in fact total messup. I finally decided to completely repartition and reformate the disk and did it the way I like it. If you have some data on disk you should backup it. YOu can buy adapter that can connect your notebook disk into some desktop machine as secondary disk. Backup it if you can and do the repartition. Otherwise only one thing remains - booting somehow into any bootable OS disk (XP perhaps) and try to repartition and reformat disk from there.

I wish you luck,

 

Thanks everyone. I decided to do it the easy way and start from scratch!! Complete reformat and new install of XP Pro (since Home is locked up on the recovery disks, dammit!!) I did notice that my laptop was sucking battery power like crazy, and I discovered that my processor was going at full clip all the time. I discovered this after installing Notebook Hardware Control ( www.pbus-167.com/chc.htm), a quite useful piece of freeware, I've found. Anyways, it was showing that no matter what i was doing, my Turion was flying at 1800 MHz, and sucking all the power oot of an already anemic battery. I downloaded the Turion driver from AMDs website (it's a combo driver for Turions, Semprons, Athlons) which, I think, enabled AMD's PowerNow! technology.

Anyways, I'm rambling on here, so I'll stop now and thank you all for your help. I love these forums...ask and ye shall receive (help)!

Thanks!!

 

i've been wanting to delete that PQSERVICE and install XP pro, thanks that i've read your problem first. didnt know that you have to install something to tell win xp to "take it easy because im just a laptop"

 

I do not think, reinstalling Win is really necessary.
Read my previous posting. In order to edit "boot.ini" use a Linux Live Version like "Knoppix" (because Win-Partition is FAT32, is also writable for Linux, so you can edit "boot.ini").
To boot Linux from Cd you have to change the boot-order in Acer Setup (press "F2" while startig your notebook).

If it does not help, you can try to restore the MBR (master boot record) with your Win-Xp Cd. To do this, boot from the Win-Cd (Win-Cd-Installer should find your Win-Xp System) login in your installed Win-Xp (Consolle) and use the command "fixmbr" to restore the MBR.

Because i have some others trouble with my travelmate 2423 wxmi (please see my other posting: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=48328 ) i had no time to do this by my self, so no guaranty if it works.