Paragon Partition Manager destroyed my laptop!!

Wombat

I downloaded and ran the above program as listed in this thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=283014

on to my Acer Travelmate laptop as I wanted to merge the 2 partitions on the hard drive (C: and .).

I set it going and, after a couple of hours of grinding away, it told me that the "boot sector is too small", asked me to press any key to reboot and then promptly did so.

Only thing is that, instead of booting to the usual XP Pro, it now boots to a blinking cursor and stops.

Fortunately I have back-ups of my most important stuff, but if anyone has any suggestions at hard drive recovery, I'd be grateful as I don't fancy having to reinstal everything if it can be avoided.

Thanks in advance.

Seagull

Hi Wombat, does your travelmate have a restore partition ? I read somewhere that you can prsee alt-F10 during boot to get to a restore feature ?

Wombat

It does, Seagull. Whether that got destroyed also in the procedure I'm not sure. But thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a go and see what pops up.

Wombat

Hmmmm. The key sequence was Alt + F10 during startup.

But it didn't work, unfortunately.

It's 10 past 2 a.m. I'm still restoring my programs after formatting and reinstalling everything.

Let this be a warning to anyone using this program!!

sco0ter

For the Alt+F10 to work you have to have Disk 2 Disk recovery enabled in the bios. Also it sounds as though you destroyed the MBR so it wouldnt work anyway.. When using paragon to merge the partitions on my acer I first converted both to NTFS then merged.It keeps the Hidden partition and still lets you use the Disk 2 Disk feature

JonnyThunder

In all fairness though, it's not just this program. If you use anything which modifies the FAT or general disk layout on your PC, you risk having issues like this. And while im up here on my soapbox, you should beware of defrag tools too. If a defrag goes belly up whilst relocating a critical part of your harddisk you could have big issues.

[/end_rant]

Wombat

sco0ter wrote: »

For the Alt+F10 to work you have to have Disk 2 Disk recovery enabled in the bios. Also it sounds as though you destroyed the MBR so it wouldnt work anyway.. When using paragon to merge the partitions on my acer I first converted both to NTFS then merged.It keeps the Hidden partition and still lets you use the Disk 2 Disk feature

Thanks, ScoOter. Yes, this was enabled in the BIOS and it still didn't work, unfortunately.

Did you use the same program I did for the merge?

Thank God I'd made a Recovery disk when I first bought the laptop!!!!

Now - I've reinstalled most things but the wireless connection is playing up. It was working fine before the disaster.

The problem is that the laptop's wireless card can't obtain an IP address. It's showing as 0.0.0.0.

Router is a Netgear WGT624 v3. Wireless card is an Atheros AR5005G. Running WinXP Pro Service Pack 2.

I can connect to the Internet fine via an Ethernet cable to the router. I've tried using a static IP address with no success. I've done ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew in which case it comes up with a time-out error. I've done the right click and Repair in Network Connections - no good.

On the Desktop it's showing as Connected to the router, then Connection Not Available, then Connected, then Not Available. Obviously because of the IP address problem.

I'm now running out of ideas. Any suggestions, please?

sniperpenguin

Do you have encryption set up on the router? If you need a WEP / WPA key to connect and have not configured one on the card-side, then some will connect and show as 0.0.0.0

Also, Do you have some proprietary software installed for the wireless card in the laptop? sometimes there can be conflicts if both Windows and the software are trying to dictate the connection.

Finally, look at the logs on the router at the point when the laptop tries to connect. There may be some useful information there.

Wombat

sniperpenguin wrote: »

Do you have encryption set up on the router? If you need a WEP / WPA key to connect and have not configured one on the card-side, then some will connect and show as 0.0.0.0

Also, Do you have some proprietary software installed for the wireless card in the laptop? sometimes there can be conflicts if both Windows and the software are trying to dictate the connection.

Finally, look at the logs on the router at the point when the laptop tries to connect. There may be some useful information there.

Thanks, Sniper. Yes, WPA is set up on the router and the card.

I'm using the Atheros Client Utility and Windows management of the connection isn't enabled.

I checked the setupapi log and it said that there was no relevant driver for the device (Atheros card). I uninstalled it and reinstalled it, rechecked the log and it installed fine. After that it no longer disconnected from the router, there seemed to be constant traffic between the card and router, but the card still had an IP address of 0.0.0.0.

Will now check the router logs.

Wombat

OK - the router logs are next to useless (there's only one and it just lists the websites visited!).

However, I think I've narrowed it down. I use a WPA passphrase for security. When I set the router and Atheros card security to "None" the laptop connects fine, obtains an IP address and can get on the Internet.

If I use the passphrase, it's no go. Spelling is correct, and I don't want to remove the router's security for obvious reasons.

Any suggestions?

albertross_2

make sure the type wpa/tkip, and key matches, copy and paste it.