missing partition

[yolagp]

EEEK! I did it again! Everything was working fine. My 40gbs hdd had 2 partitions, one with Winme and one with win2k. (I just wanted to experiment a little with win2k, as I was getting ready for a clean install) I tried to go back to winme, so I thought I had to set that partition as active. So I went to the disk manager and &%$@#¡ everything. My computer got so angry it would'nt boot any OS. So I thought, well, anyway, I was going to make a clean install of win2k, so I proceeded, installed it and configured my harware and software. Then I realized that my computer only recognizes the 4gbs partition, even though it "knows" there is a 40 gbs hdd, but it doesn't let me get to that partition and merge it into the rest. Will I have to start all over again? Is it any way of doing that without reformatting and making another clean install? Help me please!

[Alejandro]

If i get it right, now you're left with a 4GB partition with Win2k installed into and 36 GB's of unassigned disk space.
If that's the case, there's a commercial program (Partition Magic, www.powerquest.com) which gives you the option of merging partitions among other options, without loosing any data.
I've done it many times without problems, but using FAT. If you installed Win2k over NTFS however, this program supports it also, but i never tried with that file system.
Hope that helps!

Me acabo de dar cuenta de que podriamos haber hablado en castellano, pero nadie hubiera entendido :)

[yolagp]

Gracias, Alejandro, I got Partition Magic and tried it, but the same thing happened: it says my disk is 40gbs, but my partition is 4 gbs, period. Finally I re-formatted and reinstalled, and now I have my 40gbs partition, but everytime I boot it keeps asking me which partition do I want to boot from, though now I only have one bootable partition. Then it waits 30 seconds, and ends up booting fine. Well...nobody's perfect, and computers are pretty stubborn cratures...Hey, felicidades for your basketball. ;)

[Paul Komski]

I think it likely to be related to your boot.ini file. I am reading up on this before formatting a partition with WinME on it (on a dual boot on which Win2K is hidden when ME boots) and on which the boot.ini file is installed. I don't want to format and not be able to boot to an OS - of course. :P

A couple of links that might help:-

BOOT.INI Not Cleaned Up After Repartitioning (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q141188&)

Windows 2000 Boot.ini Configuration Resources (http://www.labmice.net/Windows2000/install/bootini.htm)

btw; the BootLog.txt file also contains a log of previous boot-ups.

[yolagp]

Thank you, Paul. I clicked one of the links you sent, followed detailed instructions on how to edit the boot.ini file, and now my computer boots smoothly and fast.