PartitionMagic FAQ
1. I have my free space after my C: partition, however, I am still
unable to resize my C: partition, what am I doing wrong?
There are two reasons why you would be unable to resize a partition that has free space
to the immediate right of it. One, the free space is still inside the Extended partition.
All you need to do, is select the Extended partition by clicking on it in the partition
map or partition list then choose "< RESIZE" and make the extended partition
smaller. This will move the free space outside the Extended partition.
Two, you are attempting to resize the partition across a cluster boundary and do not
have enough free space inside the partition you are resizing to allow the clusters to be
resized. Below is a chart that shows the cluster boundaries and the space needed to resize
a partition across that boundary.
| Cluster Boundary |
Space Needed |
Cluster Size |
| 128mb |
8mb |
2k to 4k |
| 256mb |
41mb |
4k to 8k |
| 511mb |
205mb |
8k to 16k |
| 1023mb |
564mb |
16k to 32k |
2. What will happen to my CD-ROM drive letter if I
create a new partition?
When you create a new partition, the CD-ROM is assigned the next available drive letter
after your hard drive partitions. To prevent the drive letter from changing in the future,
you may want to assign a higher drive letter such as M: or N: to the CD-ROM for DOS or
Windows95. For more information about how partitioning affects your hard drive see the September 1996 Partition Magician.
3. What do I do if I try to run PartitionMagic and it comes up to a
blank screen and won't start?
Try booting from a bootable DOS disk without loading your CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT
file.
4. Does PartitionMagic work with compressed drives or compression
software?
Yes. However, PartitionMagic will only work on the host drive. PartitionMagic cannot
modify the compressed volume in anyway. Compressed drives are made up of two partitions
the compressed volume and the host drive. The compressed volume contains the actual data
and the host volume contains information on how to access the compressed volume. In order
to reduce the size of a partition that is compressed, first you must go into the
compression software and reduce the size of the compressed volume (or increase the amount
of uncompressed free space on the drive). By doing this, PartitionMagic now has the space
needed to "resize" the host partition. When creating new partitions on a
compressed volume you need to make sure that any new partitions are created after the host
volume. This is because the host and compressed volumes are linked together by the drive
letters and if the drive letter assigned to the host volume changes you will not be able
to access the compressed volume.
5. Does PartitionMagic work with SCSI drives? Why doesn't it see mine?
PartitionMagic does work with SCSI drives as long as the drive has software INT13
capabilities. Most SCSI drives allow you to enable this option in their setup, however
some do not. INT13 is what PartitionMagic uses to communicate with the drive. By simply
turning on this feature, PartitionMagic should recognize the drive without any problem. An
easy way to see whether your drive is setup to use INT13 is to run FDISK /STATUS. If FDISK
can sees the drive properly, you will have no problem using PartitionMagic to partition
your drive.
6. Does PartitionMagic work with drives larger than 1024 cylinders? If
so, then why does PartitionMagic and my other programs only see about 504MB of my large
drive?
Yes. PartitionMagic will work with drives larger than 1024 cylinders. The 1024 cylinder
limit is referring to a DOS limitation. DOS can only see that first 1024 cylinders or
504mb. In order to work around this limitation you need to either enable LBA mode in your
CMOS or use a Disk Management program such as Ontrack Disk Manager or MicroHouse EZ-Drive.
An easy way to find whether your computer is set up to work around this DOS limitation is
to run FDISK/STATUS. If FDISK recognizes the whole drive than you are using one of the
above methods to work around the DOS 1024 cylinder limitation and shouldn’t have any
problem using PartitionMagic to partition your hard drive.
7. What do I do for an error #1002 (Found orphaned extended
attribute)?
Error #1002 means that there is a problem with OS/2 Extended Attributes File. This
error can be resolved by booting from your OS/2 boot floppies (i.e., installation or
utility disks) and running OS/2's CHKDSK from a floppy.
8. What do I do for an error #2001 (FAT copies are not identical)?
Run SCANDISK that comes with MS-DOS, or upgrade to PartitionMagic Release 2.02 or
later. This should resolve the problem.
9. What do I do for an error 1019 and 1027?
These errors are most often caused by open files. To correct the error, check to make
sure that you are not running PartitionMagic from the partition you are trying to modify.
Try booting from a boot disk (DOS or OS/2) and run then PartitionMagic. Also make sure you
are not using HPFS/386. This will cause such an error.
10. What do I do for errors 100-199?
In many situations, these errors can be fixed by PowerQuest technical support. However
the best way to resolve such problems is to: 1. Backup the offending partitions. 2. Delete
them. 3. Recreate them. 4. Restore their contents. You may need to use the FDISK program
from a recent DOS version. (Older versions may refuse to delete HPFS or hidden
partitions.) The OS/2 FDISK program may recognize the partition's corruption and refuse to
modify it.
11. How are drive letters assigned to the new partitions that I
create?
The assigning of drive letters is done by the operating system (i.e., DOS, Windows,
OS/2) and not PartitionMagic. DOS assigns drive letters in the following manner: The first
primary partition on the first physical drive is labeled C and the first primary partition
on the second physical drive is D. Next, the logical drives are labeled starting with
logical drives on the first physical drive ( E, F) and then the logical drives on the
second physical drive are labeled (G, H). Your CDROM and any REMOVABLE drive will be
assigned the next available drive letter after your hard drive partitions. For example, if
you have C, D, and E partitions your CDROM would become F. For more information on how DOS
assigns drive letters see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article Q51978.
12. What is a "DOS/4GW Professional fatal error?
DOS/4GW Professional fatal error is a DOS extender crash. The DOS extender is a program
that runs before PartitionMagic and gathers information from your BIOS for PartitionMagic
to use. PartitionMagic uses the same DOS extender as the popular game DOOM. If you are
able to run DOOM, you should have no problems running PartitionMagic. There are a number
of things that can cause this problem to occur, such as hardware or memory allocation
problems. To correct the problem, try booting the computer with a DOS bootable disk that
has a Config.sys file with the following lines in it.
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\EMM386.EXE
DOS=HIGH,UMB
13. What is Error #2013?
Error #2013 (a component of FAT Geometry is bad) means that there is an incorrect value
in the Boot Record. In order to determine what is causing the error, you will need to E-Mail or Fax (801-226-8941) us a copy of the
boot record from Norton Disk Edit and the output from PARTINFO. We can then take a look at
and see if the problem is something we can fix using Norton DiskEdit, the alternative is
to backup, delete and restore that partition. The following are the instructions for
running PARTINFO.
PARTINFO is a program that comes with
PartitionMagic that is used to report the contents of the Partition Table. The information
from PARTINFO can be used to solve various Partition Table errors.
The following are the instructions for printing the output of the boot record from
Norton DiskEdit to the printer or to a file.
1.In Norton DiskEdit, press Alt D (Drives). Highlight the partition that is giving you
the error.
2.Press Alt-B (Boot Record). This should display the boot record.
3.Click on Tools and Print Object As, make sure that Boot record is selected and then
choose whether you want to print the output to the printer or to a file. NOTE: the DOS
Reports column will not print to either a file or the printer. You will need to manually
add this information to the output that you receive.
14. What is Error #2012?
Error #2012 (Formatted FAT file system too big for partition) means that the FAT boot
sector claims the partition is larger than it really is. This is an extremely dangerous
situation and data can be lost when the FAT file system tries to use the space outside the
partition that does not exist or belongs to another partition. Since data may exist
outside the partition boundary, the error cannot be fixed by simply patching the boot
sector. If you have Norton Utilities, you can try running Norton Disk Doctor to correct
the problem. Otherwise you will need to back up all data on the partition, delete the
partition, create the partition again and restore the data.
15. Does PartitionMagic support FAT32 partitions?
PartitionMagic 3.0 supports FAT32 partitions, including converting between the current
versions of FAT (FAT12 and FAT16) and FAT32. In order to be able to access FAT32
partitions you need to have Windows 95B.
16. How do I get my mouse to work with PartitionMagic 2.x?
PartitionMagic 2.x did not ship with a mouse driver. In order to be able to use a mouse
in PartitionMagic 2.x you will need to load a DOS mouse driver before going into
PartitionMagic. You should find a DOS mouse driver on the utility disk that came with your
mouse.
17. Why do I receive the message "Can’t find PQMAGIC.OVL
when running PartitionMagic after installing the PartitionMagic 2.03 patch?
You may have downloaded the wrong patch. Check the labels on your original disks for
the version of PartitionMagic that you have. Check the release of PartitionMagic that you
have by clicking on Help and About PartitionMagic while in PartitionMagic. You will then
need to delete all of the files in your PQMAGIC directory and then reinstall
PartitionMagic from the original disks and the download and install the appropriate patch.
18. How do I move free space outside the extended partition and add
it to the C partition?
1. Move the free space to the beginning of the Extended Partition. Click on the
partition to the left of the free space and then click on Move, change the free space
after to zero and then click on OK. This will move the free space to the beginning of the
Extended Partition.
2. Move the free space outside of the Extended Partition. Click on the Extended
partition and then on Resize, change the new size to the minimum size listed at the top of
the dialog box and then click on OK. This will move the free space (gray area) outside of
the Extended partition (blue border) and to the right of the primary partition.
Note: If you have more than one primary partition, you will need to move the free space
to the right of the partition you want to resize using the procedure outlined in step one.
3. Resize the C partition to include the free space (gray area). Click on the C
partition and then on Resize, Change the New Size to the maximum size listed at the top of
the dialog box and then click on OK.
For more information about moving free space in and out of the Extended partition see
the October 1996 Partition Magician.
19. When performing an operation in PartitionMagic (i.e., Resize,
Move etc) I get a black rectangle on the screen and the computer beeps. Why?
The black rectangle and beeping noise are caused by Virus or Boot Sector Protection
being enabled in your BIOS. Disable it and you should have no problem using PartitionMagic
to partition your hard drive.
20. Why do I receive the error "Can’t Find
PQMAGICT.EXE" when installing PartitionMagic 3.0?
This problem is caused because PQMAGICT is the last file in the directory and the CDROM
software is timing out before it reaches the end of the directory. You can correct the
problem in one of the following ways:
1, If you are using Corel SCSI drivers for your CDROM, add the line SlowSearch=YES to
the [CorelCDX] section of CRLSCSI.INI file.
2, copy the contents of the CDROM into a directory on your hard drive and then try
installing PartitionMagic from that directory.
This problem was corrected on 3.01 release of PartitionMagic. You can get a updated CD
by calling our Customer Service Department at 1-800-379-2566.
21. How do I run PartitionMagic 3.0 on a system that only has NTFS
partitions?
To run PartitionMagic from a system that only has NTFS partitions, you will need to do
the following:
1. Boot the Computer into Windows NT.
2. Install PartitionMagic 3.0 to the hard drive.
3. Copy PQMAGICT.EXE to a DOS formatted floppy disk.
4. Exit Windows NT and reboot using a DOS Floppy bootable diskette. (Usually formatted
under DOS using format a:/s switch).
After the booting process has finished, insert the PartitionMagic 3.0 diskette you just
created using Windows NT into the floppy drive and type PQMAGICT.
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