1 (edited by Hazardous 2009-03-15 17:37:07)

Topic: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Hello, I am new here and I have a problem.
I have linux, windows 7 and XP on same HDD. I shrinked the fourth partition and increased XP ant 7 partitions. Before, I had bootloader configured with easyBCD, but now I get a black screen with blinking underscore. I have gparted live CD and Ubuntu CD. Can anyone tell me how to fix this problem? I can't use XP CD for recovery, because it don't recognise my password though I know it is correct.

2

Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

All four partitions seems to be undamaged, because I can go to them using non-installed Ubuntu.

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

I tried using gparted to change bootable partitions, but it didn't worked.

4 (edited by Hazardous 2009-03-15 21:18:24)

Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

I also tried deleting all files used in booting and was willing to see any error, when I restart PC, but nothing happened, same old black screen...
I uploaded image of gparted (in ubuntu) menu: http://www.2shared.com/file/5088563/458c4779/image.html
Don't know why there's a first master partition or something, but second partition is ubuntu, third is windows 7, fourth is storage partition with no OS, and fifth partition is XP. Maybe someone can tell me, why XP and that first partitions are listed as main and others aren't?

5 (edited by cmdr 2009-03-17 00:36:17)

Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Hello Hazardous,
i'll try to put some order to the data, you gave us. Please correct me, if I'm wrong.

Your "GParted" screenshot:

sda is a 298.09 GiB (SATA?)-Harddisk with
first partition sda1 as Extended Partition, containing
logical partitions:
sda5 (18.63 GiB, ext3, UBUNTU, not mounted, because you use a LiveCD),
sda6 (39.86 GiB, NTFS, Windows 7, mounted as /media/disk by LiveCD?)
sda7 (224,72 GiB, NTFS, Data, mounted as /media/disk-1 by LiveCD?)
second primary partition sda2 (14.88GiB, boot, NTFS, Win XP, mounted as /media/disk-3)
No unallocated space

What's evident : Partitions are in unusual order. It depends on the boot process, the size of the harddisk and the BIOS, whether this is a problem for the bootable partition sda2 or not.  Anyway, it's not ideal. What Bootmanager do you use : Linux (Grub, syslinux) or Windows (NTLDR or BOOTMGR; on what partition do they reside ? sda2 = C: (Win XP)?) . Where does the Master Boot Record code come from (Windows or Linux) ? I assume, you use a Linux Bootmanager, because Windows is not able to boot Linux distros.

I shrinked the fourth partition (sda7?) and increased XP(sda2)  ant 7 partitions (???).

What resizing operations did you exactly do with "GParted" ? Were they successful due to the "details" ? Are you aware of the fact, that you cannot work with "GParted" on mounted partitions ?

If you had no unallocated space, you would have done it that way :
1. Shrink sda7 by the intended amount.
2. Shrink sda1 by the same amount.
3. Grow sda2 to the left.

Did you do so?

Crash analysis most often needs very detailed information to be able to give a good recovery advice.

Regards
cmdr

6 (edited by Hazardous 2009-03-17 19:46:48)

Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Thank you for respond.
The way you put order is correct.
All boot files (except linux files which were in linux partition sda5) were in C partition. I was using vista bootloader (i am not sure about its real title) which was configured using easyBCD in windows 7. It was able to boot ubuntu.
As far as I can remember there were seven operations for resizing procces. I first shrinked sda7, then moved it to right, then growed sda6, then moved unallocated space next to sda2 and growed sda2. Something like that. I don't remember all operations precisely though...
I don't recall shrinking extended partition. I don't quite understand why there is such a partition...
I am aware that I cannot work with mounted partitions.

I lost my patience and wiped out all partitions containing OS's. From unallocated space I created 3 new ntfs partitions and was about to install XP as an error occured. It seems, that after first reboot windows just starts installation operation all over again from the start. Even though it did copied main system files. It was probably because it didn't found any bootloader or maybe because no partition had boot flag. Is it essential to set boot flag if I want to install OS?

After failed installation I can't mount nor XP, nor the remaining files partition, thus gparted wont show them.
Anyway, since I don't have any OS now, could you help me partition my drive for best usage? Files partition must remain. When I find a way to get access to partitions I will upload you image of present gparted screen.

I am sorry for my grammatical and other mistakes.

7 (edited by Hazardous 2009-03-17 20:41:25)

Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

No matter what I tried, gparted just wont load any partitions and just show all HDD as unallocated space. To solve this I inserted windows XP disc and deleted those unnecessary partitions. There is current picture:
http://www.2shared.com/file/5108294/a21 … arted.html
As I can see files partition has a boot flag. Could it be that it  is the reason why all my attempts to install any OS failed?
Could anyone tell me how to make 3 more partitions? I would probably press on unallocated space to create new partition and repeat this process three times but I don't know what to do next. In the end I need sda1 partition to become sda4, and sda1 should be bootable. I'll wait for somebody's opinion...

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Hello Hazardous,

are you sure, that your data partition is yet readable after this rough remedy ???
Your actions have very contra-productive effects. You don't give us a chance, to advice something, which makes sense. Please , use another file sharing site ( e.g. mediafire.com) for your screenshots or show the print-out of "fdisk -l -u" ( from a Terminal/console window of "GParted") alternatively.

Regards
cmdr

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Other working services for picture sharing are imageshack.us, photobucket, flickr etc.
2shared com gives often the message "User downloading session limit is reached. Please try again in few minutes." However this happens a few hours ago.

About GParted: I didn't see anywhere above to mention the GParted Livecd version you used. Ubuntu install cd usually contains older GParted versions. The latest Ubuntu is almost 6 month old. There was a lot of work on GParted since then. So, the latest GParted cd is always recommended. In very few cases, an older version could detect partitions better than the newer ones.

Another aspect of the problem could be any hardware problem. Failed installation can be the result of a hardware failure, e.g. ram. Be sure that all cables are well connected (data and power cables of the cd drive and hard disks). It would be better to check the hardware with a Linux livecd like Knoppix. If it boots and works, the hardware is very probably good. Furthermore, it could show if the remaining data partition is accessible.

As cmdr suggests, the command "fdisk -l -u" gives very useful info.
Perhaps there is some problem in the partition table.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

It's good to see quick response. I used 2 shared, because it didn't required to register. I usually put all images in my site's server.
Files partition is accessible, but I probably forget to check it because now I found that all files required for booting are written on root of that partition.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfdedfded

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        9579       38913   235633387+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 522 MB, 522043904 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1011 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9b19e2c9

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *           1        1010      509008+   6  FAT16

Usage: fdisk [-l] [-b SSZ] [-u] device
E.g.: fdisk /dev/hda  (for the first IDE disk)
  or: fdisk /dev/sdc  (for the third SCSI disk)
  or: fdisk /dev/eda  (for the first PS/2 ESDI drive)
  or: fdisk /dev/rd/c0d0  or: fdisk /dev/ida/c0d0  (for RAID devices)
  ...

Is it different if instead of knoppix I use Ubuntu live CD ? Everything seems to work just fine.

Mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/?0531mcjnl4e

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Hello Hazardous,

first of all : don't "play around" with your harddisk anymore or this is my last support !

Hazardous wrote:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Repeat it with "fdisk -l -u" as requested , because we need sector or block units and not cylinders to avoid new trouble. Do it after having successfully done the below written tasks.

Preliminary Tasks:

1. Download the newest "GParted Live CD ISO" from here
2. Save all data from your nice 512 MB USB Stick, because we use it as bootmedia for "GParted"
(provided, that your System is able to boot from USB Sticks in general )
3. Use UNetbootin to create a bootable "GParted" USB Stick and test it. (maybe Boot sequence in BIOS has to be altered).
4. Type "fdisk -l -u" in a console window ("Terminal" icon on "GParted" Desktop) and show the print-out here.

Preview, of what we will do then ( exact "how-to" follows !)

We will create a second primary partition sda2 (for XP installation), which is located in front of the first and uses exactly the unallocated space, but keeps the first cylinder untouched (Master Boot Record !). We will change partition order to disk order (sda1 -> sda2; new sda2 ->sda1). We then resize the two partitions to the size, you intended. I need exact sizes for data/file partition, XP (and all others : Win 7, Ubuntu, Swap; my suggestion). We will put the bootflag to the first partition sda1, then install Win XP there and test it. Finally we will create an Extended Partition, because we need more than four partitions totally, and install three logical volumes. I would suggest, that we install Windows 7 beta next and Ubuntu at last, because you have to delete Win 7 beta in September and probably loose its Bootmanager then. "Grub" with Ubuntu is able to start both Windows versions without problems.
Why do we use a primary partition for the data and not an extended. Well, you got "the toothpaste out of the tube", anyhow ... we will never get it back again with "GParted".

Regards
cmdr

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

I get error trying to open UNetbootin in ubuntu live:

[/home/ubuntu/Desktop/unetbootin-windows-319.exe]
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
zipinfo:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of /home/ubuntu/Desktop/unetbootin-windows-319.exe or
          /home/ubuntu/Desktop/unetbootin-windows-319.exe.zip, and cannot find /home/ubuntu/Desktop/unetbootin-windows-319.exe.ZIP, period.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l -u

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfdedfded

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *   153870570   625137344   235633387+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 522 MB, 522043904 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1011 cylinders, total 1019617 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9b19e2c9

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1   *          63     1018079      509008+   6  FAT16
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Sorry, I forgot, that you don't have a working Windows OS at the moment. There is also a Linux version of "UNetbootin" available. Download it here. I didn't try it yet, but it should work with "Ubuntu".

Your new "fdisk" print-out shows, that the starting block of sda1 matches a cylinder boundary, which is good news for the intended recovery measures.

Regards
cmdr

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Re: Black Screen Of Death After Gparted Resize

Thank you for your help. I have already installed XP and 7.