resized partition with DD10, lost drive letter, and TI11 has error message "E00010F4 unable to open (initialize) computer"
Hi –
I have a Dell D620 laptop: Win XP pro SP3; 2 Meg memory; 235 Gig hard disk, partitioned as Drives C (volume = SystemFiles, 65 Gig) and E (volume = MyDataFiles, 170 Gig); drive D is the CD-DVD player. There is one hidden (MBR) volume with 235 Meg.
My situation is as follows.
Years back replaced the Dell OEM OS with a fresh retail (not OEM) reload of Win XP Pro, using DD10 to partition the drive as noted. Also at that time began to run backups with TI11. Have had Win 7 Pro for some time waiting for time to install onto another Dell D630 plus load updated application programs and transfer the data files. Meanwhile I did not keep up with backups and so nothing has been anywhere current for a long time (... My bad).
Over time drive C has gradually grown from 25 Gig, and recently nearly filled up (apparently due to Symantec Endpoint Protection updates?? – they stopped loading 2 weeks ago). Since drive E was only about half full, I wanted to free up space to give to Drive C, also thinking this would be a good time to recommit myself to doing backups again.
Not having had any hard disk problems thus far, and not thinking to backup FIRST, attempted a manual resize of E from 170 to 133 Gig, and then (again, not thinking) to automatically (DD Wizard function) increase free space of C, committing to both as a simultaneous operation (… bad move, I now realize from reviewing forum articles). Since it was already loaded in drive C, I ran DD from within Windows (another bad move, considering any change to drive C would require a reboot).
Once started Acronis DD forcast 18 hours for completion (it did take the entire 18 hours). The result on completion was a smaller E drive, with unallocated space immediately adjacent to Drives C and E. There were NO changes to drive C drive (still 65 Gig). The system did NOT reboot, and NO errors were reported by DD. But now, the E drive letter identifier has gone missing (does not show in Computer (Disk) Manager, and although the volume name is still visible, I cannot access the drive at all. Of interest is that DD now shows MyDataFiles as drive F… I suspect that somehow DD thinks the unallocated space after C should now be E, and what used to be E should now be F.
Disk status in DD showed:
Hidden = primary
C = primary, active
unallocated = unallocated
F = Logical
I immediately stopped any further changes, and began researching on these forums. Following recommendations by Grover, K0LO, MudCrab and others, my recovery plan was to make an image of the “hosed” disk to an external spare disk (drive letter changed to Z to avoid the external drive letter getting bumped by adding a printer, etc, via USB port), and as Mark Wharton recommends, “restore it as-is to a spare disk, then do all recovery attempts on the spare disk”, taking everything slowly, step by step.
So far there are no apparent problems with drive C, external drive or CD-DVD drives (have run a half-dozen applications since resizing occurred – all my programs are on drive C – and I can save and open data files on drive C)… We just can’t see MyDataFiles.
But when I attempted to run TI from within windows, received the following error message:
“E00010F4: Unable to open (initialize) computer”, etc (basically, snapshot manager library is corrupted)
A right click on MyDataFiles in Computer Manager will allow me to ADD (assign) a drive letter to MyDataFiles – Starting with F and going to the end of the alphabet (I cancelled out instead). Since up to this point I had been able to move around within DD (LOOK, no touch), I decided to look in DD with “Change Drive Letter” just to make sure it still showed F for the drive letter – it did show F, and all of a sudden it went to “NONE” (I don’t think I clicked on it)… When I tried to “undo” this supposedly “pending operation”, discovered that the “undo” arrow was greyed out, and when I tried to “cancel out”, got a pop-up information message”
“Reboot required – Reboot now?”
When I cancelled that message – DD closed… On attempt to re-open DD, I get the following error message:
“E000101F4: Reboot required. Reboot computer before starting the application”
To reiterate, up to now the computer has not been rebooted since before this whole saga began… Just in case not having a reboot might facilitate recovery.
At this point I’m not certain whether I have multiple problems, related to Disk Director Suite 10 and True Image 11, or one problem displaying multiple symptoms.
See attached screenshot of Computer Manager.
Note in attached Computer Manager image, the “Disk 2” [Removable (H:)] is my printer connection over USB port, and “CD-ROM 8” [CD-ROM (E:)] is the interface box containing my spare drive (Model = CP-USH-300 SATA HDD Smart Mobile Enclosure from CP Technologies) over USB port.
Appreciate all suggestions and help… I have learned my lessons.
Thanks, Jonathan
Jonathan:
In looking at your picture of Disk Management, since there is no drive letter assigned to the "MyDataFiles" partition, the files will not be visible in Windows Explorer. Try right-clicking on the graphic image of the partition in Disk Management (the one outlined in a green box) and and choose "Change Drive Letter and path". Assign it the drive letter E if available now. If not, assign it any other drive letter just to see if you can get your files to show up. Let Windows do this; not Disk Director. Perhaps after a reboot the letter E will show up as available again and you can then assign it to the partition.
If this works, shut down the PC and boot into the recovery version of Disk Director on CD. Resize the "SystemFiles" partition from the right to include all of the unallocated space. You should end up with a 100 GB partition after the resize.
Is there a reason that you wanted the "MyDataFiles" partition to be a logical partition? Logical partitions are more fragile, especially ones at the end of a long chain of logicals. In the long run you'll have fewer problems with primary partitions; they are more robust. If you get your disk sorted out you may want to consider converting the Data partition from logical to primary. But don't try that until you have a backup copy of everything on the partition!
Mark
Will proceed with recommendations. Results will be posted. And yes... Once we have a backup, partition will be converted from logical to primary!
Learning much from people like yourself, Collin and Grover (just to mention a few), with appreciation for the contribution of everyone on the forum... Thanks to all for their generous gifts of time, experience and wisdom.
Jonathan:
A clarification about backing up your data partition - assuming that assigning a drive letter makes the partition visible again in Windows Explorer, I would then run chdksk /r on the data partition to be sure that you don't have any file system errors. Once you are certain that the partition is in good health and not missing any files, copy all of the files to an external hard disk. This will be your backup.
You can then use Windows Disk Management to convert the partition from logical to primary. One way to do this is to delete the partition, then create a new primary partition in its place. Format the partition then copy all of your files back from the external hard disk. DD 10 can do this also but I tend to favor using Windows built-in tools when they are able to do the job. There are some things that Windows Disk Management cannot do, so in those cases I would use Disk Director.
Mark:
Thank you. I have noted your clarifications, but we are not quite at that point yet. For now am posting results update as promised. We may have made a small bit of progress, but not enough to move to the next step.
Last night came across Acronis Forum topic #44180, and Glover's post #11 had link to SevenForums tutorial # 82994, where Option Two shows how to manipulate drive letters in the registry.
So here's what I did.
1) As a double check, opened the registry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices to view device status (LOOK only, no touch). List of drives shown included E (??) and F (MyDataFiles).
2) Went to Disk Management, to change drive letters. Still the only letters available were F thru Z (no E available). Made the assignment change from F to W. Refreshing the registry confirmed change to W.
3) On a hunch, went back to Disk Management, and when I went to change a drive letter – surprise – the letter E was now available for the FIRST time since these problems began. I attempted changing letter assignment from W: to E: and, it took. On refresh, registry confirmed the change. Just to be sure I've toggled the drive letter assignment from E to W and back to E several times. The registry tracks each change.
[Speculation: Perhaps assigning W: as the drive letter somehow caused the E: letter to become released???]
So the small bit of progress is that now we can assign E: to the MyDataFiles partition...
... But, MyDataFiles volume (with letter E: assignment) is still NOT shown under My Computer, and so we are still NOT able to view the files in this volume.
Two questions:
1) Is there anything else I should attempt to make the MyDatFiles volume visible in MyComputer?
2) Or are we now at the point where a reboot is required?
I would like to avoid a hard reboot until absolutely necessary, just in case doing this might muddy things further.
Again, thank you, and looking forward to your recommendations
You can try to refresh the My Computer view by closing it and then accessing it again using the Control Panel. I would say however that a reboot will be required. Mark should respond to confirm.
Enchantec, thanks!
As suggested, closed My Computer view, then re-accessed from Start, My Computer. Repeated several times; makes no difference. Could not seem to find a way to access My Computer from the Control Panel (this is an XP machine) -- but please let me know if I'm being blind to the obvious 8-). And my guess is you're likely correct about the reboot, but since that is a once done forever action I'll await confirmation from Mark.
Did notice something iteresting...
When in Control Panel, switched to Category View, selected Performance and Maintenance category. Under the P&M "Pick a task..." selected "Free up space on your hard disk".
When the Select Drive window opened, clicked the drop-down arrow under "Drives". And there I see two choices available: "SystemFiles (C:)" and... "MyDataFiles (E:)" (!!) So what we have is the drive letter E and volume name MyDataFiles visible with Disk Management, the registry, and now here (with "Free up space")... But not visible with My Computer.
So what you think about this, Mark?
Jonathan:
Drive letter E did not appear as available since you still had a registry entry for that letter for the data partition. Once you assigned a different letter to the partition, letter E became available. That all makes sense.
I think you have reservations about rebooting since in your first post you described DD 10 asking for a reboot to complete some steps that you didn't want it to complete. I share your concern, but don't know whether your closing the program has canceled any pending operations or not. Try what Enchantech has suggested and kill the Windows Explorer process, then re-start it using Task Manager (type "Explore.exe"). See if your data partition then shows up.
At some point you will need to reboot...
Jonathan:
Just saw your reply #7. I don't get forum email notifications (Acronis is working on that) so forgive me if I don't see your replies right away. I think it's time to reboot and see what happens. If the data partition is still not visible in Windows Explorer, then its type attribute in the partition table might be wrong (it should be type 07, NTFS). DD 10 might have done that. It's easy to fix if that's the case. But one thing at a time...
Mark:
Had to first learn a new trick (for me) -- How to terminate and restart Windows Explorer 8-P
That's done, and now there's VERY GOOD NEWS to report... MyDataFiles (E:) is back... 100% intact... Able to OPEN files... All without rebooting...
Thank You, Thank You, Mark and Enchantec !
With your Generous and Gracious help, we've achieved the best of all possible outcomes. Thanks again... I owe both of you Big Time!
Now... To run chkdsk and then copy all files to my external drive... I'll be going to sleep thinking Backup, Backup, Backup :)
FYI, would like to keep this thread open for now. I'll post an update once everything is backed up.
Jonathan
Enchanted:
Hat's off to you and Mark! Thanks... see my reply#10
That's great Jonathan, glad to have helped
Jonathan:
That's great! Glad to hear that your data is intact.
After you have everything backed up, your next step is to resize the XP partition. You need to do this before trying what I suggested in reply #4. If you use Windows Disk Management to delete and re-create the data partition it will start right after the Windows C: partition, so first resize C: to the desired size.
Shut down XP and boot into the Acronis standalone version of Disk Director 10, right-click on the Windows partition and choose "Resize". Drag the slider to the right until you have included all of the unallocated space on the disk, then click "Commit".
Once you have the Windows partition at its desired size then work on converting the data partition.