Dead in the water! Help!

[snowcon3]

Hey all,

Just bought a new laptop over the weekend with a 15GB recovery partition which I obviously wanted the space from. I used PM10 to get it done, and it hung up on restart (which I've read about).

I restarted and I got an error stating that the device could not boot because it was inaccessible.

I've done EVERYTHING I can think of to remedy this to no avail. I've booted into recovery mode in PM10 and made sure everything checks out, and it does. I've tried Windows recovery startup repair only to have it tell me that it cannot fix the problem. I've tried repairing the MBR with no results.

The last thing I want to do is a clean install, as I've spent all weekend removing bloatware and installing my programs and gettings my set-up just right.

Please help! Nothing I seem to do has yielding any results!

[Paragon_Tommy]

Hello Snowcon3,

Can you describe the steps you took? You mentioned that you wanted to take space away from the factory restore partition and give it to your system partition, is that correct?

Did you perform the operations within windows or from a recovery disk? Within Windows, shrinking the recovery partition should not call for a restart. I recommend using the Full Scale Advance options interface. Break the steps down and perform one successfully at a time. In your circumstance:

Assuming your hard drive has the layout: [Recovery Partition][System Partition]

1. Shrink the recovery partition from the right side to the left, making the available unallocated space between the recovery partition and the system partition. Apply settings.

2. Extend the system partition to consume the unallocated space.

You mentioned your system is not booting up at this point. Boot to the recovery disk, check the layout of your hard drive to see if the partitions are intact. Check the system partition to see if it's active and unhidden. Finally, in "Boot Corrector" Search for OS and update MBR.

Good luck,

Tommy

[banhien]

My laptop (Studio XPS 13) which is 4 weeks old has 500GB (well 465GB) HDD

It's original setup:

1. No idea for what is on the first one 39MB
2. Recovery partition D: can't remember its size
3. OS partition C: the rest

After receiving the laptop from Dell, I ran Vista disk management and getting this:

1. No idea for what is on the first one 39MB
2. Recovery partition D: 17GB
3. OS partition C: 298GB
4. Data partition F: 150GB

On Sunday 18-Oct, after getting Paragon Partition Manager 9.5 free. I did a resize for F: and C: (make F: bigger and C: smaller) and getting this (see image)

http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...uter/merge.png

1. No idea for what is on the first one 39MB
2. Recovery partition D: 17GB
3. OS partition C: 136GB
4. Data partition F: 312GB
5. A small Unallocated free space 95MB

#5 above is small space but how can I merge this to either C: or F: ?

Please help,

Regards,
BH

[SIW2]

Hi,

Open PM9.5 main window as in your screenshot.

Rt click C and select Move/Resize.

In the new window that pops up, drag the edge of C all the way to the right - to incorporate all the unallocated space.



Click Yes, then Click Apply.

Hope it helps

[banhien]

Hi,

Thanks for the tip BUT I can not move the edge, could be this free version has some limitations or could be it is in extented partition (please see my image again).

BH

[SIW2]

There are no limitations on the program.

Let's see your screenshot clearly:




That's better - you can now see the unallocated space is inside the Extended partition.

In that case, Rt click F, select Move/Resize.

In the new window, drag the edge of F all the way to the LEFT.

Click Yes, click Apply.

If you have a lot of data on F it may take a few minutes to complete.

Hope it helps.

EDIT: It is possible With PM9.5 to include it in C - but there are several steps - hardly seems worth it for such a small amount.

Hope it helps.

[banhien]

Originally Posted by SIW2

..EDIT: It is possible With PM9.5 to include it in C - but there are several steps - hardly seems worth it for such a small amount.
Hope it helps.

Many thanks - I did try that way and go to here to post my result, but you are quick. Anyway many thanks. That's right, only 95MB, but I don't really like to keep a gap.

BH

[SIW2]

You are welcome.