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After installing Norton Ghost 98, and trying to backup my disk could not reboot on Windows. Symantec suggests to run GHREBOOT which failed, and then to play around with GDISK. Now I can boot from my CD & FD, see my C and D drives, but not boot from my HD.
With GDISK I can see 1 (active) Extended partition of 28GB, and 2 Logical partitions (C & D). I believe that I need to change my "C" Logical partition to Primary. How to proceed simply? and if possible without investimg money...
You can have an active extended partition without having a primary partition. Maybe that's just the way it was originally set up.
What happens when you try to boot normally? What error messages do you get?
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DAVEINCAPS, though it's true that you can have an active extended partition without having a primary partition, Windows 95 & 98 won't boot from a logical drive in an extended partition. Windows needs to boot from a primary partition located within the first 8-GB of the first hard disk. The rest of the OS can reside anywhere, but it has to BOOT from the primary partition.
Daniel, though I haven't used Ghost at all & have limited experience with GDisk, I believe the problem is that the partition somehow got changed from primary to extended.
HTH
Dave
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DAVEINCAPS, I setup this computer to boot 6 different OS's. Unfortunately, I learned most of this the hard way.
:-)
Dave
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DAVEINCAPS:
When I try toboot, I just have a blinking cursor, no error message.
When I was playing around with GDISK, I deleted 3 partitions:
1 probably used by Ghost
1 which was my Laptop HW diagnostics
and I last one which was small one, cannot remember what it was exactelly.The only error message I get is with GDISK telling me that my disk is not a bootable disk. What to do??? I really need to reboot, I can see all my C and D files.
PLEASE HELP.....
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If you deleted partitions, the drive letters changed. So what is now c: may not have been c: when the other partition were still there. If you deleted your primary partition which was c:, then your d: drive became c:
The message you're getting that your disk isn't bootable can mean you deleted your primary partition or that your primary partition isn't set active. Run fdisk, option 4 to see if you've got a primary partition or, if you don't have one, see if there's any space top create one. Gdisk probably has the same features but I'm not familiar with it.
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DAVEINCAPS,
You are certainly right about my partition issues, GDISK is very similare to FDISK but gives more details.
I now have the following status through GDISK:
GDISK (W) has an active partition that is not bootable.
1 disk with 3 partitions of 28615.8 MB
Partition 1, Extended, Active of 28341.2 MB
Partition 2, Logical (C:) of 4996.7 MB
Partition 3, Logical (D:) of 23344.4 MBIf I look at the content of my C and D drives, I see all the files I had previously, so the drives are effectively C and D. But I cannot boot from a Logical Drive.
Do I need to delete the C partition and create a new one (just made a partition image backup just in case), if so what is the exact procedure to create a FAT32 Primary active disk?
Thanks for caring
Daniel
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Daniel, is there also unused space on the beginning of your HD? If there is, create a Primary DOS Partition and set it active. Reboot & format it. Then use Ghost, xxcopy, or some other utility to copy your current C: partition onto the newly created C: partition. You will then probably have to do a fdisk /mbr and sys C:, after which you should be able to boot.
HTH
Dave
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Looks like you have an extended partition of about 28 gig containing 2 logical drives, c: with 5 gig and d: with 23 gig. Do you know what the entire capacity of the drive is?
If you have any unallocated space on the HD you may be able to set up a primary partition and boot from there. Do either of the c: or d: drives you have now show a windows directory? If not that's probably the partition you deleted and you should be able to recreate it since the space would now be unallocated. Then you'd need to install windows on it.
I don't know if you can change an extended partition to a primary partition especially since you've got 2 logical drives in the extended partition anyway. You can only have one drive in a primary partition.
Maybe Dave357 will post back with some recommendations. I think he's more knowledgable than I am about this subject. Or you may need to start a new thread giving the partitioning information and specifically ask about changing an extended partition to a primary partition.
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Thanks for posting back, Dave357. I was doing 2 or 3 other things while I was composing the above response and missed yours.
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Dave,
My laptop drive is a 30 GB one, I have 2 logical partitions of 5 GB (C) and 23 GB (D). My C drive contains approx. 4 GB of data.
I cannot create a new C drive as I wouldn't have enough space to copy the existing one onto it.
I made an ghost image backup of my C drive to my D drive.
Should I simply delete my C drive with either FDISK or GDISK, create a new Primary drive of 5 GB, format it and restore my Ghost image to it?
If so, do I need to install Win98 before or not, as it's on the image?Please advise, and thanks again for your help
Daniel
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Daniel, you're going to need a third-party utility such as Partition Magic to change the partitions. Here's why:
Although it would APPEAR that you currently have 2 partitions, in reality you only have one. It is an Extended DOS Partition. Within it are 2 Logical Drives...your C: and D: drives.
If you delete the C: drive, you will only free up space WITHIN the Extended DOS Partition. You cannot create a Primary DOS Partition inside of an Extended DOS Partition.
You need to create empty space at the front of the HD...in front of the Extended DOS Partition. The only way to do this (without completely wiping the entire HD) is to resize the Extended DOS Partition. Fdisk is unable to perform this operation. Gdisk, I believe, (though I could be wrong about this) is also unable to do it. There is a freeware utility called Partition Resizer that will perform the necessary operation. I've never used it, but I've seen it recommended fairly often.
After resizing the partition, you can use fdisk, Gdisk, or whatever utility that you're comfortable with to create the new Primary DOS C: Partition.
I'm still not sure just how the partition problem occurred, but this should cure it.
HTH
Dave
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Dave's,
I finally managed to fully restore my system which is now up and running.
This is what I did:
1. make a Ghost Image of my C (logical) drive to my D drive.
2. Delete with FDISK my C Logical partition.
3. As I had 255 MB left on the disk (not reserved) by the extended partition, created a new C Primary DOS partition, installed Laptop Win98SE on it.
3. Rebooted, installed my External disk driver, and copied all my files from D to external drive.
4. Deleted ALL internal disk partitions with FDISK.
5. Created a C Primary partition of 5 GB, formated it and installed Win98SE again (Laptop)config.
6. Re-installed the external disk driver to C drive.
7. Under Windows, launched MS-Dos Prompt, and launched Ghost from floppy. Restored my Image from External drive to C.
8. Re-booted, created an Extended (and Logical) D Partition of 20 GB. Restored all my files from External drive.I looks like my initial problem came from the fact that my drive was partitionned with Partition Magic, which is incompatible with Ghost.
Anyway, it's all over now, learned a lot thanks to your help.
Cheers guys, and thank you very much for caring.Daniel
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Daniel, glad that you got it sorted out, and thanks for posting back with the results.
Dave
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