Problem:
I recently merged two of the partitions on my hard disk using Partition Magic 8.0.....both of them NTFS. First one was the primary C: drive where windows resided. Second one was the E: drive that I had created off of C:

Background info:
Now, when I created the extended partition E: off of C:, I was just trying the software out so I just made the partition E: NTFS. Then I decided to have a dual booting system and decided to install Debian(woody) so I took a chunk out of the E: drive and changed it to Ext3 (all using PSM 8.0) and installed Debian on it. Doing so caused Windows to become unbootable. But with a few keystrokes in google, I was able to find out the cause (the NTFS was hidden) and used "CFDISK" to unhide the partition and everything was running smooth until now.

Now, since I took out the chunk for Debian Linux from the E: drive, instead of converting the WHOLE of E: to Ext3 filesystem, I still had some space on the E: drive which I should have kept as was but I don't know what came over me or what came to my mind, I wanted to merge it with the C: drive and so I did.

After I applied the changes, the system rebooted and the blue progress screen appeared, everything went fine and then it rebooted again. LILO's bootloader menu appeared. This time, when I tried to boot windows, it wouldn't boot(I can boot into LINUX just as easily as ever). It gives an error saying "We are sorry for the inconvenience but windows cannot boot" or something like that and gives me an option to try booting in either SAFE MODE, SAFE MODE WITH COMMAND PROMPT, SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING, LAST WORKING CONFIGURATION, BOOT WINDOWS NORMALLY. I've tried all of 'em and none of 'em work. All gives me a blue screen with lots of things written on it but before i could read a word, goes black and gets me back to lilo's bootloader menu.

I've a lot of important term papers in my windows partition so completely formatting my hard disk is not an option for me. Please anyone who can help, please advise. Your help will be greatly appreciated. If you need further info, please do ask. I will provide as much info as I could.

Can you boot from Linux on your system??? If so, you may be able to recover your papers, etc. from Linux and save them to a CD-RW or USB-key drive. Then you can safely re-install Windoze and then re-configure Grub to boot either Windoze or Linux...

The second option is to use a CD-bootable Distro like Knoppix to pull the files you need to save (papers, save-game files, pictures, etc.) off of the Windoze drive, and then do a re-install.

These two options are procedurally easier, but more traumatic to your system. Since it is advisable to re-install Windoze from time to time, I'd try doing them first, unless there was something so unique about your set-up that MUST retain it the way you had it...

The third option, what would cause the least amount of "trauma" to your system, is to figure out a way to fix grub to correctly find your Windoze partition... I doubt this is the problem, since you seem to be getting Windoze error screens. In other words, I truly believe that Grub is correctly pointing out the Windoze partition and begins to load it, but because Windoze is expecting a drive of a different size, it is generating errors. I have no idea how to fix Windoze anymore. It's been years since I used it for personal use...

As guffy has said all your information is retreivable from linux, but i'd back all your information up before trying anything else.

You should have made 2 rescue disks with partition magic, can you use them to get into windows ? Or maybe you didn't make any rescue disks ? Well never mind, if you have partition magic you can run it on another machine (running the same version of windows as you need to rescue) and make 2 new disks (you dont have to install PM to do this).

You can try fix windows through the shoddy rescue console. Boot to winXP cd, r to 'rescue'. Select the number of the partition (probably 1), then run 'chkdsk' (to verify the disk is ok) followed by 'fixboot.'

As for lilo, it sounds like its working fine, the problem is in xp/partition magic. PM probably expects the hidden partiton to still be hidden.

Well first things first parttion magic and xp dont get along
Doing anything with a ntfs file system after its created is a walk on thin ice. The error your getting in xp I hear on a dialy basis considering im doing tech support for xp for MS uhhh


OK first the error your getting on the blue screen will tell you whats wrong.


Most errors are formated as such


alota bullshit about your bios and other crap that aint gonna help:


STOP: 0x00000000 (0x00000000,0x00000000,0x00000000,0x00000000) <-- replace 0 with the correct value


now lets break this monster down shal we

the only ones that are importans are the first block and the first 2 in the ()

If you can get this information and post it here i can search the knolege base here at work and give you some kind of helpfull suggestion.


Otherwise youve probably messed up the ntfs stuff and youd be lucky to retain data


By the way what is the geometry of your disk like parttions

Thank you guys for all the responses. I would have tried using the PM rescue disk method but the problem is I don't have a floppy drive on my laptop. Is there a way that I would be able to burn the rescue contents on a cd and use it from my cd-drive? OR if I were to install Knoppix to try to retrieve my files from windows, how do I go about it? I guess I'm gonna have to format my disk partition holding the Debian GNU/LINUX. How do I do that and after I have installed Knoppix, how do I retrieve the files from windows? Is there a utility in Knoppix that allows linux to cooperate with windows? ...Still looking for answers.

Knoppix will boot off a CD drive, so there is no need to install it. Also, distros like Damn Small Linux can even boot off a USB key drive (if the BIOS permits this). Use the CD-burning tools to then burn your files you wish to keep to a CD.

What you want to do is to use a "temporary" Linux distro like knoppix or DSL to pull your files off the NTFS formated HD (Linux will read NTFS partitions by default),... burn them to a CD with something like K3b, and then do your re-installs. I'd recommend giving Windoze a moderately-sized FAT32 partition so that you can exchange info from Linux to Windoze. Linux can read NTFS partitions, but Windoze can't read EXT2, EXT3, ReiserFS or any of the (many) other Filesystems that Linux supports. Linux can safely read and write to FAT32 partitions, and Windoze will see them as well.

Why do you want to re-format your Debian partition??? Is it not working??? If you can boot to Debian, you can use IT to pull your files off your NTFS partition... I believe Debian includes K3b,... and if not, you can install it, save your Windoze files, and then do your re-installs...

Thanks all for you help, especially JaseP for your valuable suggestions. That really helped. In debian, I was able to mount my windows partition to a new directory and pull all my important files from windows to linux. I also saved them to a cd's in case, I might lose them again. Now, the big question is "how do i go about reinstalling windows xp?" I still wanna have a dual booting system with windows xp and Debian. I can boot into debian just fine..i can do whatever I wanna do under debian. The problem is the windows partition. I am also thinking about having a FAT32 partition for use by both debian and xp...like you guys suggested. PLease advise on that. Your help will be greatly appreciated.

During the windows installer you can format the ntfs disk to fat32. After you have installed Windows you need to reinstall Grub (or Lilo, whichever you use) because the Windows installer is rude enough to replace your bootloader with a crappy one. You can probably do that with a Debian (rescue) cd (don't know much about debian).

Fat32 is only an option during the windows xp installer if the disk you parttioned is not larger then 32 gb otherwise it only gives you the ntfs option.