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- PowerQuest(R) PartitionMagic(R)
- Version 8.02
-
-
- You may find it helpful to watch the PartitionMagic Flash tutorial
- before using PartitionMagic. You can display the Flash by clicking
- Help > Flash Tutorial from the PartitionMagic main screen.
-
-
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- -----------------
- 1. Back up Your System!
- 2. Activating PartitionMagic
- 3. General Usage Notes
- 4. Known Issues - Windows NT/2000/XP only
- 5. Known Issues - Windows 9x only
- 6. Uninstalling Windows Me
- 7. PowerQuest's Storage Manager Newsletter
-
-
- 1. BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM!
- -----------------------
- Remember to back up your hard drives before using PartitionMagic.
- While PartitionMagic has been thoroughly tested, power failures,
- operating system bugs, and hardware design bugs can put your data
- at risk. BEFORE USING ANY UTILITY THAT MAKES SUCH EXTENSIVE
- CHANGES TO YOUR HARD DISK, YOU SHOULD BACK UP YOUR DATA.
-
- To back up your system, we recommend using PowerQuest Drive
- Image(R). Drive Image is a disk imaging tool that lets you create
- an image of your entire system that can easily be restored.
- Having a backup lets you run PartitionMagic with the security
- of knowing that you can get your system back up and running
- if you run into problems.
-
-
- 2. ACTIVATING PARTITIONMAGIC
- ----------------------------
- When you install PartitionMagic, the software is in demo mode until
- you activate it. In demo mode, you can make changes that appear in
- the PartitionMagic interface, but you cannot apply those changes. The
- first time you run PartitionMagic, you are prompted to activate the
- software. You can click Yes to activate the software immediately, or
- you can use the software in demo mode and activate it later. To
- activate the software later, click General > Activate Product from
- the PartitionMagic menu bar. Then follow the directions in the
- activation dialog.
-
-
- 3. GENERAL USAGE NOTES
- ----------------------
-
- - PartitionMagic does not support Windows NT Server or
- Windows 2000 Servers.
-
- - Be aware that there is no undo (after clicking Apply) if you
- merge two FAT or FAT32 partitions. You must be particularly
- careful not to merge two primary partitions that include
- operating systems, as your computer will not be bootable if
- you do.
-
- - Progress bars are an estimation only and may pause for several
- minutes, even though PartitionMagic is still working correctly.
- If you think your computer has locked up, please be patient and
- allow PartitionMagic to finish the operation.
-
- - You should set up removable media drives so that they are the
- last drives on your system. Drives are assigned priorities as
- follows: primary master, primary slave, secondary master,
- secondary slave. You should not have a fixed hard drive
- set up as the secondary master if you have a removable media
- drive set up as the primary slave. If you have two IDE
- controllers, you should connect removable media drives to
- the second controller, after any hard drives. If you have a
- RAID configuration, disconnect any removable media (such as
- a Zip drive) before using PartitionMagic. If you do not
- configure removable media drives as the last drives, you
- will see disk numbering inconsistencies in the PartitionMagic
- interface, and the wizards will not work on your system.
-
- - Bad Sector Checking is OFF by default. PartitionMagic ships
- with bad sector checking turned OFF by default. Modern hard
- disks are designed to avoid bad sectors automatically.
- However, if you feel that bad sectors may be a problem on your
- system, turn on bad sector checking (by unchecking the
- appropriate boxes in the "Skip bad sector checks" list box in
- Preferences). Turning on bad sector checking ensures that data
- is not moved or copied to bad disk sectors; however, this
- causes the create, move, and resize operations to slow down
- considerably. Another way to verify that there are no bad
- sectors on your disk is to run the operating system check
- utility (CheckDisk or ScanDisk) and do a surface scan before
- launching PartitionMagic.
-
- - A non-Asian language version of PartitionMagic should never
- be used on an Asian language version of Windows NT/2000/XP,
- as this may cause corruption of filenames and partition/
- volume set labels.
-
- - You cannot use PQBoot for Windows (a utility included with
- PartitionMagic) unless there is at least one primary
- partition on the first hard disk.
-
-
-
- 4. KNOWN ISSUES - WINDOWS NT/2000/XP ONLY
- -----------------------------------------
-
- - PartitionMagic does not support volume sets, stripe sets, stripe
- sets with parity, or partitions located on disk mirror/duplex
- sets configured using Windows NT Disk Administrator. Under
- Windows 2000/XP, PartitionMagic supports standard partitions
- located on basic disk sets only.
-
- - In a configuration with mixed IDE and SCSI hard drives, Windows
- NT does not always see the boot drive as the first physical hard
- disk. PartitionMagic displays drives in the order Windows NT
- reports them. As a result, you may see your boot device as Drive
- 1, 2, and so forth. This does not cause problems for
- PartitionMagic except when setting a new active partition. Also,
- PartitionMagic may incorrectly report that there is no active
- partition on your system. To change your active partition, be
- sure that you identify which drive is the boot drive.
-
- - You should not change the drive letter originally assigned to
- the Windows NT/2000/XP boot partition (the partition where Windows
- is installed). Changing the drive letter to anything but its
- original designation will cause severe boot problems and may
- cause your computer to be unbootable.
-
- - Under Windows 2000 or Windows XP, if you perform operations
- on partitions that include mount points, you must restore the
- mount points after the operations are complete.
-
- - Error 183: Init Failed. If you attempt to run PartitionMagic on
- a Windows 2000/XP Professional machine where the boot partition
- (the partition where Windows 2000/XP Professional is installed)
- is on a dynamic disk, you will receive the following error message:
- "Init failed: Error 183. Unable to identify the Windows partition."
- To solve this problem, Windows 2000/XP must be installed on a
- basic disk.
-
- - Error 184: If you encounter error 184 when initializing
- PartitionMagic, run Disk Administrator (Windows NT) or Disk
- Management (Windows 2000/XP), then start PartitionMagic again.
-
- - If the System Restore feature of Windows XP is monitoring a drive,
- PartitionMagic cannot perform operations on that drive in Windows.
- Instead it must drop down to boot mode to perform the operations.
- The operation will still be successful.
-
- - To uninstall PartitionMagic under Windows XP, you must be logged
- in as the user who originally installed the product. If the user
- account has been deleted, you must remove PartitionMagic
- manually by cleaning out the PartitionMagic install directory and
- registry.
-
-
-
- 5. KNOWN ISSUES - WINDOWS 9x ONLY
- ---------------------------------
-
- - On a computer with a dual boot, if you have more than 20
- partitions, you may not be able to launch PartitionMagic from
- Windows 9x.
-
- - If you create an NTFS partition under Windows 9x, it will be
- created with NTFS version 3.0, which is not compatible with
- Windows NT 4.0. To create an NTFS version 1.2 partition that will
- work with Windows NT 4.0, run PartitionMagic under Windows NT 4.0
- or from the rescue disks and create the partition.
-
- - Under Windows 9x, PartitionMagic and the operating system may assign
- different drive letters to USB, USB2, and FireWire drives. This
- problem is a result of the inconsistent way the operating system
- assigns drive letters for removable devices. If the drive
- letters appear differently in PartitionMagic than they do in "My
- Computer," PartitionMagic can still work on the removable drive.
-
-
- 6. UNINSTALLING WINDOWS ME
- --------------------------
- If you use PartitionMagic (or FDISK or any other partitioning
- software), you should be aware of the following Microsoft warning.
-
- IMPORTANT: You should not attempt to uninstall Windows Me if the
- partition information for your hard disk or disks has changed
- since you last installed Windows Me successfully. Windows Me
- creates a backup copy of your partition information in the
- Suhdlog.dat file at the end of a successful installation, and
- Uninstal.exe restores the partition information listed in the
- Suhdlog.dat file to your hard disk during the uninstall. If the
- partition information on your hard disk or disks has changed
- since you last installed successfully (specifically, since the
- Suhdlog.dat file was created), then you might experience partial
- or complete data loss as a result of attempting to uninstall
- Windows Me.
-
-
- 7. POWERQUEST'S STORAGE MANAGER NEWSLETTER
- ------------------------------------------
- PowerQuest has a free electronic newsletter that is dedicated
- to official announcements, tips, and techniques for PowerQuest
- products. You can view the newsletter online at
- www.powerquest.com/newsletter.
-
-
- =============================================================
- PowerQuest can be reached at:
-
- Voice: 801-437-8900
- Web site: www.powerquest.com
- E-mail: magic@powerquest.com
-
- Copyright 1994-2003 PowerQuest Corporation. All rights reserved.
- PartitionMagic and its use are subject to a license agreement and
- are also subject to copyright, trademark, patent and/or other
- laws. Refer to the user guide or www.powerquest.com/legal for
- additional information about PowerQuest patents. PowerQuest,
- PartitionMagic, BootMagic, and Drive Image are registered
- trademarks of PowerQuest Corporation. All other brand and product
- names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective
- owners.