Disk Management Recovers Data Partition

[cortez]

After I deactivated Acronis "OS SELECTOR" Three partitions ( two with an OS and one Data) were missing from the XP bootloader, only the default C was operational.

Using bootcfg /add the two other OS's were picked up but the Data partition was still not showing except in DD10 and in Disk management.

It was not listed in "My Computer" neither in "Windows Explorer", thus I had no way to access my data or add to it. I tried to get it recognized by using "Change Label" and "Change Letter" utilities of DD10 (first removing the letter then adding it again), but still it went unrecognized.

Finally in Disk management the "Change Drive Letter and Path" > "Change Drive Letter or Path" I let it keep the drive letter assigned (G) and pressed 'OK' and it cured the problem.

Now it is in "My Computer " and it is shown and functional in "Windows Explorer" and I have control of it again. This was on a drive with 3 XP's and only one data partition.

[MudCrab]

I was wondering if you would mind clarifying a few points.

Did you just deactivate or did you uninstall OSS?

Did OSS give you the choice of which of the 3 XP's you wanted to be the default OS?

Where any changes made to the booting arrangements after OSS was installed? (For example, you setup XP multi-booting after OSS was installed.)

Or were you already booting 3 XP's with XP bootloader when you installed OSS?

I have never had any partitions disappear from deactivating OSS.

[cortez]

MudCrab:

This was one of my test disks that became a favorite to manipulate: I was actually trying to get DD10 to crash and see what caused it. I tried resizing, coping, OS copying, merging, moving partitions, deleting and recovering partitions ect.. The main problems were grey-outs of the various functions but there always seemed to be a work-around (often using Windows itself).

This disk was set up according to the Acronis manual (install 1st OS, then use OSS to install the other two OS's-- only correctable problems, just a lot of booting). OSS worked pretty well on this old 40 gig western digital drive, and gave me many months of service. This was not a Windows boot-loading trial.

So to answer your question I only deactivated OSS, I did not remove it. It also allowed me to chose which of the three XP's to be the default and I chose C. I was also surprised by these problems but considering the beating I gave DD10 it was inevitable that a few sectors became unreadable and I had to use chkdsk /r to correct it.

The best reason I can think of for the OSS problem is probably the scrambling of the registry with all the 'artificial' procedures that a regular user would probably not ever do (or need to do). After the deactivation, Window's boot-loader was probably 'shell-shocked' and spit up only the C partition.

On other disks OSS was so erratic I gave up on it and went with Window's Boot-loader (which was twice as fast).