BootMagic problem

[harryfok]

Hello,

I'm a new user of MyDefrag. I think it's a good tool and it's running well with my XP machine. However, today I encountered a problem that one of my legacy machine (windows 2000) was failed to boot after running the MyDefrag 4. My Windows 2k installed in a FAT32 partition with Boot Magic 8.0 installed.

The defrag process running well at the beginning. I left the machine for it run for the rest. On the next day I come to the computer again, the MyDefrag process has been stopped by saying that system is lacking of memory, process has been terminated. I though it just a minor issue for my computer temporary lack of resources. Then I restarted my computer as usual, but the startup process was stucked while loading the Boot Magic process. It says "Error #8250. Error reading boot record. Press any key to reboot." I thought the boot record of my master harddisk has been corrupted. So, I try to run the BootMagic recovery tool. However, my trial failed without any luck. It shows the same error when run the boot magic configuration tool.

I'm wondering if the developer of  MyDefrag or any other user may have any idea of my issue. I'll be appropriated for any help you may provide. Btw, I can still access to the harddisk files by booting the machine with the Windows setup CD.

Thanks,
Harry

[Darlis]

I would guess that MyDefrag moved a file which Boot Magic assumed to be at a fixed place. It could be a file named "head1.dat" (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/powerquest.nsf/6c360f88152ecfce88256e91005066ac/e6223d1630e8ad8388256e8d006a841e).

You'll probably have to reinstall Boot Magic to make it work again. You should be able to boot to Windows normally by executing fixmbr in the recovery console.

[harryfok]

Thank you Darlis. I'll try that out later this week. Btw, I wonder if the fixmbr command might cause any possibility of data loss of my harddisk?

[Darlis]

It is unlikely but yes, there is: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx
Since this tool only writes the MBR and partition tables, you can use other recovery tools to restore these (if fixmbr messes up). They won't touch your actual data.

Btw. it is always good to have a backup.

[jeroen]

It's the first I hear of any problem of using MyDefrag in combination with BootMagic. MyDefrag does not touch the MBR and partition tables in any way, so it is impossible that your MBR or partition table was corrupted by MyDefrag. But as Darlis has said it is possible that BootMagic expects a configuration file at a fixed location, and perhaps MyDefrag has moved that configuration file. I would expect the BootMagic recovery tool to fix a problem like that, though.