Partition Magic 8.0 shows Error #113

[JoeWalkerJr]

PLEASE HELP !!  I've spent over 4 hours on the phone today with Symantec's Customer non-Support and never spoke to anyone with a clue about Partition Magic - the product they bought from PowerQuest.
 
I ran PM 8.0.1 on my Dell Inspiron E1505 (Win XP Media Edition, 2005) laptop when it was new, back in Oct-06 to optimize the default partitions.  All has worked well until last night...
 
... when I ran the Windows XP disk defrager.  After it ran, I ran Norton Disk Doctor (Norton System Works 2004) - which reported finding a 23.5MB DOS Partition that was "inaccessible".  Disk Doctor asked if I wanted to make the partition accessible - and I mistakenly said YES.  Disk Doctor did something - then rebooted my laptop.  From that point on, my laptop will not boot.  Regardless of attempting to boot normally, into SAFE mode, into "The Last Good Configuration", or from the Dell Windows XP CD - the machine displays a Windows STOP ERROR screen with the ERROR CODE 0x000000CA.
 
Dell's technical support confirms they place a hidden DOS partition of 23.5 MB with various utilities on the drive, but it is normally not visible.  It does not show up as drive C:, or D:, etc.  The primary bootable NTFS partition was drive C:
 
I do have the PM 8.0 Rescue Disks from when I first installed and ran PM on this Dell.  I am able to boot from these floppies and when PM runs in DOS mode, it reports ERROR #113.  Searching the PM manual, it seems this error is from overlapping partitions.
 
I ran PARTINFO.EXE from the DOS disks and see that in fact, Norton Disk Doctor screwed up the partition tables.  I have the text dump from PartInfo.exe and attached it to this post.  The PM manual indicates it is possible to manually edit the partition table to recover my data; I presume this would be via the PTEDIT.EXE tool.
 
I HAVE VALUABLE DATA ON THIS LAPTOP THAT IS NOT YET BACKED UP AND CAN NOT BE REPLACED - I REALLY NEED HELP.

Many Thanks,
RangerJoe

[GX1_Man]

Disk Doctor asked if I wanted to make the partition accessible - and I mistakenly said YES.  Disk Doctor did something - then rebooted my laptop.  From that point on, my laptop will not boot.

Well that is no doubt the cause of the problem. But if Patition Magic allows you no way to reverse this disaster, you are probably SOL until you format and reinstall. You will need restore CD's from Dell for this, which they will send you for a small fee or free.

In the meantime, see if this is a way you can salvage your data before tryoing anything else. How much is it?

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1152393515

[mundesley]

The PM8 CD is bootable, have you tried booting from it , and if possible deleting the "new" partition.

You could also try booting from a Win98 boot up floppy and using fdisk to delete the offending partition, but only if your willing to risk losing all your data, ie as a last resort prior to a format and reinstall.

[GX1_Man]

Save the data first!!!

[JoeWalkerJr]

As I wrote, I can boot from the PM Rescue Disks - and see that the "new" partition overlaps the correct NTFS partition - but I don't know enough to edit the partition tables on my own.  I dare not delete the "new" partition, because that will throw off the pointers for the exisiting (but corrupt) NTFS partition.

I can't salvage ANY data, because I can't get to the NTFS partition at all.

I know there are partition gurus that understand all the address and pointer stuff that can talk me thru manually correcting the partition table (thus salvaging all my data).  That's who I'm praying for....

Thanks all,
R.J.

[GX1_Man]

Did you look at the link I posted?

[JoeWalkerJr]

GX1_Man

Being new to this forum - I thought that link was somehow referring back to my original post.  I did check it out, and burned a CD with SLAX, from which I booted my Dell Laptop.  I know nothing about LINUX - but running the "startx" shell - which I guess is a Windows-like GUI, it appears I have access to my data on my HDD... except that I can't seem to copy it or move it off the drive to the CD Rom.  I will try a USB memory stick next...

I will spend some hours playing with this tonight - but this is the closest I've come to seeing my data since Norton Disk Doctor hosed me on Friday night!

MANY THANKS.
R.J.

UPDATE

Using an external USB HDD, I was able to move ALL my data off the Dell with the LINUX SLAX boot cd!  This is a life saver - even if I have to re-image my Dell back to factory new and spend two weeks loading OS updates and applications... I have my data back.  

Wow - I'm not sure how LINUX could "see past" the hosed up partition tables - but it did... I would have lost money on that bet.  Now - to get my paritition table rebuilt so that I don't lose anything is the next goal.

Thanks to all - expecially GX221_Man
RJ

[GX1_Man]

Glad you are all fixed up and thanks for posting back. Sometimes Linux can save your *censored* (besides the other virtues of it) and a good LiveCD is worth having on hand.  

[JoeWalkerJr]

I'm still hoping for a PARTITION GURU to find my post and offer guidance on manually correcting the partition table using the DOS PM tools.  Should I repost this in the hardware forum?

[GX1_Man]

I will be glad to move it there, if you wish, but if the data is safe then removing all partitions and starting anew without overlay software of any kind would be my next step.

Let me know if you want a move there.

[patio]

With 3 variables here including PM, Norton disk doctor and Windows i would backup all pertinent data re-format and do a clean install using the Linux option suggested.
The more you mess around trying to fix it as is the closer you get to losing that data alltogether...