Unusual result from Partition Magic action: any easy way out of it?

[Kiwi]

Since shortly after its release, I've avoided XP, waiting until forced by any program that I couldn't otherwise resist. Oblivion may be that program, BUT . .

I tested both the Home & Pro versions, they went back onto the software shelf. About the same time as I rejected XP, I did end up with two PC's that were dual-booted between W98se and W2K. I still like using Win98se for dial-up to the net. It's faster and less targeted by the vandals writing malware. I also still boot W98 up occasionally for some older PC games.

I'm an RPG game player, single player or LAN, not MMORPG. That's why I never thought I wanted to invest in state of the art 3D video, at the elevated cost that shooter players put up with. Oblivion supposedly won't run in W2K, and it supposedly wants a lot of 3D VGA accelleration. It's due out in another month, plus or minus.

When I decided not to let XP share the partition I'd been putting games into on the PC here that has an XP 3000 in it (A7N8X-X, 512 MB RAM, 120 MB Seagate primary Hdd, WD 60 GB Secondary, FX Vanilla 5900) my fastest cpu. When I used Partition Magic to cut off a separate partition in the unused space of that large partition, it screwed Windows98 around enough that I will probably have to reinstall all of the game software.

It doesn't look like I can do what I want on that PC's primary drive, and it's my fastest PC. The secondary drive is basically a local system backup, so the logical drive lettering on it, other than "D" meant no difference to any programs. I expected the new partition to become H, and push the secondary drive's second and third partitions down the alphabet chain from H and I to I and J. Instead, at least in Win98se, the original G drive is now considered "inaccessible", and the contents are now renamed to J instead, with K as the newest logical drive.

Because I was maintaining at least a little caution before starting PM up, I'd previously started a thread about the Windows boot menu in the NT-W2K-XP forum, but since I never got XP linstalled, I think I may have better luck here, now that I've seen this new and strange result that PM can produce.

I haven't looked at what happened from Win2K's orientation yet, but I don't think I can salvage the mess with what I know about Windows98 and Partition Magic. It looks like I'll have to kill the "K" off, and on this PC, use the utility from PM to redirect G's program shortcuts and links into J. Very bad bandaid stuff in my view.

I haven't decided what to do about Oblivion and XP yet.

[glc]

Just reading all that makes my head hurt. I'm going back to basics here, if it insults your intelligence I apologize in advance.

98 follows the old DOS rules for lettering partitions. The primary partitions come first, then when those are done, the logical drives in the extended partitions follow. I do not believe that you can force any of these to be something else. If you are dual booting, 98 will skip over any NTFS and hidden partitions as if they don't even exist. The optical drives then follow, but you can change those at will - I have mine as R and W (read and write - what a concept, huh?).

Now, in 2K and XP, you can change the letter of ANY partition at will using Disk Management - *except* the boot partition and active OS partition. With this ability, you *should* be able to marry up your drive letters between your operating systems.

[Kiwi]

After however many years now that I've been involved in electronic bulletin board messaging, my skin has thickened on most of my body to something on the order of rhinocerous hide. However, I did start my computer involvement back in 1970 or 1971. I learned COBOL, self-taught, for the Big Iron computers then, in self-defense. As the industry changed, I picked up additional self-taught skills with the new minis as they came along.

My first personal desktop PC was a Z-80a based CP/M machine in 1979 or 1980. It had two 8" floppy drives at first (it wasn't brand new). Roughly a year later, I had an Apple ][, before I had an IBM-PC. So I have been in the PC world since it started.

But the total amount of information about any one subject can easily exceed the memory capacity of the typical human recollection system, and PC's passed that point some time ago. Meanwhile, Windows is still capable of surprising me with an odd response even after this long. I believe that I have done exactly what I tried yesterday, on other PC's at other times, and never had this sudden drive naming mixup occur until now.

So far today, I haven't done anything more with that particular PC, haven't checked it in Safe Mode, haven't started it in W2K. If I may end up just killing the entire largest logical drive on the Hdd off, and kiss off the sizable population of programs there, it's something I'll hesitate over.

[GaryRouth]

Hi Kiwi

I haven't used Partition Magic in years, but the versions I used to use had the option to create "Rescue disks" that could undo some of the operations if things didn't come out quite right. Check your Partition Magic documentation to see if the version you have still has that ability.

Following your partition numbering system, it seems the 120gb Seagate was originally setup as C (primary, active), E, F, G -- and the 60gb Western Digital was D (primary), H, I -- yes? And I'll further assume that you used FAT32 for all the partitions, to accomodate the dual boot - and let Win98 have access to the logical drives (the numbering of your drives suggests a "yes" answer to this, too).

It does seem that it's a quirk of Partition Magic, rather than a DOS/Win9x quirk, that you're seeing - so perhaps Partition Magic can undo it's handiwork. You are right in expecting that a new logical drive added to the extended partition on the Seagate would usually be assigned H, and that the logical drives on the extended partition on the Western Digital would bump up one letter each. But that's if you were using Windows partitioning tools on bare drives.

I'm curious how the now-problematic G drive shows up in Win2000's Disk Management utility. If you say that the data that used to reside in a partition named G is now in a partition named J ---> then= unless you copied that data, you've ended up creating two new partitions - and the new G is likely not formatted & hence "inaccessible". If that's the case, and if the new G is of an acceptable size, you could simply format it & copy the contents of what is now J into it - and your games should be happy as can be.
_______________
If you end up wishing to try Windows XP - remember that it will need a good sized partition (minumum of 650mb free space on a minimum 2gb partiton -- but realistically, a partition of 10gb or greater is best).

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[Kiwi]

Although in "My Computer" and in Windows Explorer, the old game drive had the new (wrong alpha character) name through two reboots, Partition Magic, and its utility "Drive Mapper" both were seeing the partitions in exactly the way I'd been anticipating. There was no option to "fix" anything. But I did start them up on Friday and on Saturday.

Sunday, I never turned that particular PC on, all day. This morning, I planned to hit F8 between selecting W2K and seeing the splash screen, to be in Safe Mode. But I kept cycling back to W2K's F8 menu then to the boot menu instead. Not sure what I did wrong. I let Windows98se load itself after two-three misses with the F8 key.

"Jumpin' Jehosafat!" Windows fixed itself! Or Drive Mapper did it & never admitted to it?

The newest partition is almost 10 GB's, and is "H", with the Label "Luxury OS" on it. I want to slipstream SP2 into the CABs on that new logical drive, so it installs and updates at the same time, but my "filing system" here is a terrible, bad joke.

I obtained a CD with SP2 on it from Microsoft when it was first out; at the time I had no XP instance installed anywhere, but I've expected that I'd eventually be stuck with using XP. That was months ago, and the CD went into hiding. I didn't have any variety of convenience installment credit then (still don't want it now), so something must have changed at Microsoft. Now you have to have a credit card they will charge a fee to.

It would take ten hours to download it at dial up connection speeds. I had to send them an internal "Comment" message to ask how else a person can cover the $1.75 plus tax handling/mailing charge besides credit cards.

[GaryRouth]

Check around with friends and family to see if anyone can lend you an XP disk with SP2 already on it. As long as you use your own XP product key, it's perfectly OK to use another disk that already contains the Service Pack. It does save a great deal of time.

Partition Magic is a little crankier nowadays, huh? I used to use it more, back in the early Win98 days, to dual-boot with some Linux distributions. But nowadays, the disk tools in most Linux systems can do most anything Partition Magic can do, so I don't use it much anymore. [Some Linux distributions actually use licensed or stripped down versions of Partition Magic, but many have moved on to other tools].

Glad it all worked out for you.
. . . Gary

[Kiwi]

If I don't have something, none of the friends/ relatives are likely to have kept their copies. All of them who do much with computers are looking to me to back them up on things like SP2, if they don't have broadband internet. I am this family's "primary computer guru". My youngest nephew is the only truly PC literate one in the entire bunch.

At my age, the numbers of friends I have who are also PC owners is relatively small, just a couple, and like my own family, they are pretty much dependent on my expertise. Those folks who were already in their 30's and 40's when PC's first became popular, and are now in their 60's and 70's, never did buy into the IT idea in the kind of numbers that the younger people did (whether they had and used PC's for work or not, didn't make much difference to buying one for home use for middle aged- and upward people).

My work had me involved with Big Iron as a 30 year old, ten years before the first IBM PC, so I was already interested in computers early enough to still be enthusiastic when the desktop revolution occurred.

[glc]

Maybe there's a PC shop in your town that would be willing to burn you a copy of the SP2 CD or network installation file? I would assume any shop worth its salt would have one or the other, if not both. Then you can use that - and also slipstream it into a XP baseline or SP1 CD to burn your own installation CD.