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Topic: Win Xp won't boot after it's partition resized

I was going to change some things on my old HP Pavilion. It has WinXP, Mint16 and mint17.1.
I thought I could shrink the XP partition from 120G to 65G (about 30G used) before cloning or
otherwise backing it up. I used Gparted (Live CD) to do this. Now both Linux still boot but XP
hangs (blinking cursor) when trying to boot it from the grub menu.
I tried boot-repair-disk from a CD but still no Joy on XP. It put a log/results file at
http://paste.ubuntu.com/15381884/ and /15381933/.
I can boot XP from Hirens boot CD 10.6. Choice, [ Boot from Hard Drive - Windows XP (NTLDR) ] if that tells you anything.
I thought I had done this kind of thing before without incident but maybe not.
I also tried using Gparted (from mint16) to return the XP partition to it's original size, no
good, same blinking cursor.
Seems to me everything needed to boot XP is still there but Windows can't find it.
I don't know what to do next.

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Re: Win Xp won't boot after it's partition resized

Hmmm ... backup is done before dangerous operations. Anyway...

We have no info on the partition table before resizing.
It is very probable that your drive was partitioned according to the legacy way (alignment to cylinders) as it was the rule at the time of the windows xp system.
Since some years, many (or most) operating systems default to the MiB alignment for better compatibility to newer storage media generations (hard drives, SSD). So does GParted too since some years. In case we work on an old-style system it is better to select the cylinder alignment.
If this is the case, the MiB alignment selection forced the partition to realign to the MiB. After that, you have to fix the windows bootup. This is usually done by the installation cd, by selecting the "Recovery console" from its boot menu. It isn't necessary to use the same cd you used for the installation of the system, you can even do it by using another xp copy from any friend.

The following links from the GParted Manual and FAQ can be useful:
http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name … t-problems

http://gparted.org/faq.php#faq-16

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

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Re: Win Xp won't boot after it's partition resized

Thanks for helping. I think I have solved this. First I tried Bootcfg /rebuild - fixmbr - fixboot - from
a different XP CD that I have. Didn't help.Then I went back to Gparted (Live) and restored the
XP partition to it's original size. Still no help. Then I got brave/desperate and from the Live CD
started fooling around with testdisk. Analyse issued a warning about something like # of heads
not matching 240 (NTFS) 255 (HD). I changed 255 to 240 with Geometry then a warning about
cylinder boundaries or something. That sounded ominous so I changed it back.
Then deleted the Mint16 & 17 partitions (part of what I originally wanted to do) and went back
to testdisk. In the advanced menu the backup boot sector was also bad so I just went for broke
and chose [Rebuild BS]. Viola - booted from hard disk to XP. Then something wrong with
pagefile.sys so I let windows run chkdsk on next reboot and now all seems OK.

I still want to shrink XP's partition from 120G to about 60G. Will Gparted do this safely if I
choose align to cylinder instead of MiB. Or maybe a different partitioning utility more suited
to Win XP?

Anyway thanks again

4 (edited by gedakc 2016-03-17 17:48:10)

Re: Win Xp won't boot after it's partition resized

Shrinking by moving only the right-hand-side of the partition is the quickest and least likely to cause problems with booting.

If the left-hand-side of the partition is altered, then this means the partition must be moved.  Moves change where the boot files are stored and may adversely affect the ability to boot.  In these situations you will need bootable Windows live media to repair the ability to boot.

Before you do any partitioning, we highly recommend you make a backup of all your data.  That way if anything goes wrong (software bug, hardware failure, power outage), you will be able to restore.

EDIT:  Emphasized left and right.