HDD and DVD drive... gone

[bombing]

DD newbie here... and would appreciate some help.

WinXP SP2
DD 2160

I have 2 hard disks (C: & D: ) and a DVD drive. Since my C: is larger than I need it to be decided to create an extra partition on it using, mainly to use it as a back-up for my Win instalation. At the time of the catastrophe, I also had a USB stick on

Pulled up DD on auto mode and went through these steps: Wizards -> Create Partition -> Fre Space of the existing partitions -> Disk 1 -> and set it about 45Gb under letter z:

When I reboot my D: drive is gone and also my DVD drive. I'm really stressed out because I need my D: drive back - my "life" is in there :(

Can this be reverted as I didn't make a backup copy of my Win instalation (doh?)?
I'm posting a screen of DD as it lays right now...

Thanks in advance.

[MudCrab]

Can you post a screenshot of what Windows Disk Management shows?
Perhaps you just need to reassign the drive letter to your DVD drive.

I assume no changes were made to the C: drive? The partition is still the same size as before? And the new partition wasn't created?

Any time you do a partition procedure that requries Windows to reboot to do it, it seems to work better if you just boot from the DD cd and do the procedure. That way you have better control and Windows isn't involved.

[bombing]

thanks for the helping hand there! I went away for shopping and rebooted again on my comeback... voilá... everything is back to normal... mistery... ;D

But no new partition yet. I'll give it another go.

[bombing]

Everything fine now using the boot CD as suggested although my system hanged 6 times until I could create the new partition and increase some size on my D: drive.

I've just formatted my C: drive and am only running XP. I have installed True Image and Disk Director, and since I'm looking for sheer performance I want to strip down my services as much as I need - even streamlined my XP install losing loads of MSFT bloatware like IE, MP and all the apps that I don't need :D - now, I have 4 services related to Acronis running:
TrueImageMonitor.exe - 4244K
AcronisTimounterMonitor - 5288Kb
Acronis Scheduler2 Service
OSSelectorReinstall

Can I get rid of them?
True Image is installed just to... well mirror my fresh OS install with all my apps and whatever I'll do in the future, be it an incremental backup or a system restore, it will be done manually and through the CD.
As for Director Suite, I can't see using it that much either...

Thanks again

[MudCrab]

There is a lot of talk on the TI forum about the Acronis services. You can search over there if you want, but if it were me, I'd just leave then running. You could also take a look at this thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=115641) and this thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=127446) posted in the TI FAQ thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=29880).

Several of them are needed to used the program and they take up virtually no resources when not being used, hence no performance impact leaving them installed.

OSSelectorReinstall -- I think it just checks for changes if you're using OSS. If you're not using OSS then you can probably disable it. If it causes a problem with DD then reenable it.