WinXPHome won't boot up after partition magic

[vegeoku]

Ok, I need some help. Recently My C: drive has been running out of space, so I figured I would use Partition Magic to marge my other partitions, and make it all one big drive. I got the program, started it up, and tried to redistribute the free space on my C and D drives, which messed up my C drive, making me reformat it, and have to reinstall Windows. After that I decided to Marge all the partitons together. It seemed to be working fine. I told it what to do, restarted my computer, adn it started to merge the drives. I left it on overnight, and when I wake up, it is on the Windows loading screen. As if it is about to load windows. and just hangs there. It will stay for a few minutes, then restart my computer.

I don't know what to do, and I just hope to god I don't have to format my computer. I can live with having to reinstall Windows, but if I had to format everything >_< I jsut might kill myself... anyways, I'm running Windows XP Home, wiht service pack 1 I believe. I have two harddrives, 60gb, and a 30gb. The 60gb is the one that I had into 3 partitons, a 2gb, 29gb, and a 29gb. That was the one I was merging. If you need any other information tell me. Thank you for any help you can give me.

[Catweazle]

I don't care HOW good a partition management program is reported to be, never, never, NEVER work on your system partition or essential data without first backing up your data, either to another drive or preferably to external media such as CD or DVD!

Here's what to do:

If that 30Gb drive is free from essential data, configure it as your main drive on the primary IDE channel and remove the other drive from the system for now. Install Windows on it and get the system running. If it isn't, borrow or purchase another drive for the task.

When the system is running, add the stuffed up drive as a 'slave' or secondary drive. Make backups of the data on it to external media. You may need to use specialised data recovery software for the task, you may not!

When you have your data backed up, remove all partitions from the stuffed up data, start over, and restore your data when you have the system fixed up!

[vegeoku]

I would have backed up my information if it wouldnt have taken 10 days with cds >_< I need a DVD burner =/ Is ther anyway to install windows on my 30gb harddrive without formatting it? I think there is some stuff on there I would like to keep, but I can't remember. I'm going to try and back it all up on another computer in the mean time, but I would still like ot not have to format it =/

[reyark]

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