Partition Magic -- Problems with booting

I wouldn't say that I am a completely clueless when it comes to computers, but I'm not so confident when it comes to configuring hardware.

So, a couple days after I recieve my 1520 notebook, I decided to download partition magic (BT of course) to remove the Dell Recovery Partition that was stealing 10gb of my HD. I only installed partition magic but I DID NOT actually get to removing and merging the recovery partition. After installation, I started the program and partition magic said that my HD could be expanded and asked me if it could expand it (This is from the best of my memory. I cant remember exactly what it said, so there is a chance that what im saying is completely wrong). Even though I was unsure of what it was actually saying, I continued to press "OK" just for the sake of wanting to actually use the program. Similar messages came up, and naturally, I clicked OK for all of them.

Partition magic started up, and I noticed that it wasn't able to recognize the Dell Recovery Partition even though I verified that my laptop did have it when I was looking at the device manager. By this point, I didn't have enough time to carefully figure out what the problem was so I had to shut it down.

Later when I boot it up, I do not make it to the user log-in screen but instead it takes me to Windows Error Recovery screen that gives me the 2 choices: starting windows normally (which just restarts the computer and takes me back to the same page) or launching startup repair. When I run startup repair, the diagnosis says "Root cause found: The partition table does not have a valid System Partition" and then further down it says "Repair acion: Partition table repair" and finally "Result: Completed successfully. Error code = 0x0".

Re-installing is definitely an option, but of course I would rather keep my data.

Thanks, and of course, I will rep whoever can find a solution to this problem.

 

You could try booting off the Vista DVD and seeing if Repair works better from there... I am not entirely sure what all it actually tries with that option although I have seen it repair some basic stuff.

Also you could verify your partitions in the windows install process to see what shows up and doesn't.

If you can find an SATA to USB adapter for the laptop drive you could attach it to a PC and try to get your data off that way.

As a last resort you can install windows again, then immediately use a recover program to find data lost after a format, if you do nothing but the windows install there is a good chance the data will still be there however it may be a royal pain to get it (all depends how important that data is to you).

 

This isnt to hard to fix but does require some know how, and I cant really write you a giude cos it would take too long. You will need to recover your system, but if you wish to salvage your data what I can suggest, is for you to download a the Live Ubuntu OS:

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

Burn that ISO to a CD and insert it to you laptop and start Ubuntu. This will let you go into onther operating system and allow you to copy all the data you want to keep. Mind you, another external HDD is necessary.

 

Totally forgot that option, I say do that, will be the easiest, get your data off, then reformat.

But your recovery partition may be lost forever, you can always ask dell to send you a new disk which has a recovery partition on it though.

 

I would go for the LiveCD route too but I may not use Ubuntu for that particular thing. First off you have to do a little trickery (simple though) to get it to even boot (or have they fixed this?) and second you would probably have to set up NTFS mounting, you could use SLAX for example and be able to copy the files with no config (in my experience).

Stuff like this is the reason I don't like using Partition Magic, the one time I tried using it, it totally messed up my computer so it wouldn't boot into windows (Linux saved my information in that case)

 

I would go the Ubuntu route but the problem is I don't have a DVDR on me right now and I'm reluctant to do so much for only a few files and a couple programs. What kind of recover program would you recommend? How effective is it?

 

Well I presume you have your Dell recovery DVD right? If you use that it should reformat you HDD and restore it to its factory settings. If you dont have one just call Dell and tell them to send one, otherwise you have to install windows yourself and all the drivers manualy. There's no program that will recover your system per-say, there are ways, but it is far too much trouble.

 

sounds like you shut down the paritioner during paritioning which would corrupt your system, or VISTA is doing that thing that doesn't allow paritioning so that microsoft can be helped along in its quest to rid the world of OS X and linux.

uhhhh don't know of anything that doesn't require burning a cd.

(maybe move the hard drive to another system? get a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter for a desktop?)

 

I'm quite sure I didn't even start partitioning, I was just skimming the UI of the program just to get an idea of how to use it.

Well, I just completed my reinstallation of Vista-32 and indirectly got rid of the recovery partition which was my original objective. I guess. I'm currently using data recovery programs to salvage whatever I can. Any recommendations of good "undeleting" programs would be greatly appreciated.

I guess, the moral of the story is, just don't screw around with partition magic unless your completely confident. I'm just glad that I didn't use it later and potentially lose critical data.

Thanks to all who tried to help.