Drive Partition Dillemma! Locked Out of SONAR! HALP!
I've been wrestling with this major problem all week and I've been in a bind.
I have a dual-boot system with two instances of WinXP on my primary physical HD. I have them organized as such:
MAIN_XP: Word processing, Internet, graphics programs, etc
MUSIC_XP: Strictly Sonar and other MIDI./audio programs
I use BootMagic to switch between the two, and when all is well, when one is booted, the other is hidden, and vice-versa. The booted partition becomes the C: drive in either instance.
Earlier this week I was doing some disk management utilities (extending the size of another, date-only partition (D: drive) when the MUSIC_XP partition was running), and when I rebooted the computer and selected the MAIN_XP partition in the BootMagic loadup prompt, I got some message saying that the system cannot be loaded, and that there's a missing file in the System32 directory.
When I select the MUSIC_XP partition -- the MAIN_XP partition boots up!
This is how my HD is laid out, partition-wise, according to PartitionMagic:
BOOTMAGIC -- FAT - 45MB (BootMagic does not run on NTFS partitions, so the workaround is to create a small FAT partition to load it in. Normally this is the Y: drive, but it is currently hidden)
MAIN_XP (C:) -- NTFS -- 30GB (This is the general-use XP partition that is the only one that can boot up, even though the other partition was selected in BootMagic. The status on this drive is "None" rather than "Active" even though it's the actual active partition!)
MUSIC_XP (I:) -- NTFS -- 20 GB (this is the music-only XP partition that cannot be booted up, even though it is selected. The status on this drive is "Active" even though it is not the one currently booted up! Also normally, this partition is hidden when MAIN_XP is booted, and it shows up now as another (I:)
DOWNLOADS (D:) -- NTFS -- 20 GB (This is a logical partition that's like a temporary space for downloads, audio files, etc. I currently have all this date backed up on another physical drive).
All my important data files (Sonar projects, audio data, photos, word documents, emails, etc) are stored on various partitions on a separate physical drive and are not affected by this issue.
So what do I do here?
- PartitionMagic is only installed in my MAIN_XP partition, and every time I change things there, either something goes wrong or the changes to not take hold. I've tried to hide the other XP partition, set MAIN_XP as active, none of that works!
- I used the native WinXP disk storage manager to make the MAIN_XP partition "Active." It works, but every time I reboot again, the MUSIC_XP partition becomes the "Active" one again EVEN THOUGH IT'S NOT THE ONE BEING BOOTED UP!
- I have no access to my MUSIC_XP partition! I can't work on my music!!!
- I also have trouble un-hiding the small BOOTMAGIC partition - the app is installed under the MAIN_XP partition into the "Y:" drive, which this partition is normally labelled as, but I cannot unhide it, and uniding it makes matters worse -- the system thinks it's the C: drive (and it has no OS on it, so it doesn't boot up obviously!)
Does anyone know of any solutions? Any 3-rd party software that can do the trick?
Ideally I want to get rid of BootMagic entirely, and replace it with a better boot manager program, but I fear I might lose access to the MAIN_XP partition!
HELP!