Norton PartitionMagic(R)
Version 8.05
You may find it helpful to watch the Norton PartitionMagic Flash tutorial
before using Norton PartitionMagic. You can display the Flash by clicking
Help > Flash Tutorial from the Norton PartitionMagic main screen.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Back up Your System!
2. Activating PartitionMagic
3. General Usage Notes
4. Known Issues - Windows NT/2000/XP only
5. Known Issues - Windows 9x only
6. Uninstalling Windows Me
1. BACK UP YOUR SYSTEM!
Remember to back up your hard drives before using PartitionMagic.
While PartitionMagic has been thoroughly tested, power failures,
operating system bugs, and hardware design bugs can put your data
at risk. BEFORE USING ANY UTILITY THAT MAKES SUCH EXTENSIVE
CHANGES TO YOUR HARD DISK, YOU SHOULD BACK UP YOUR DATA.
To back up your system, we recommend using Symantec Drive
Image(R). Drive Image is a disk imaging tool that lets you create
an image of your entire system that can easily be restored.
Having a backup lets you run PartitionMagic with the security
of knowing that you can get your system back up and running
if you run into problems.
2. ACTIVATING PARTITIONMAGIC
When you install PartitionMagic, the software is in demo mode until
you activate it. In demo mode, you can make changes that appear in
the PartitionMagic interface, but you cannot apply those changes. The
first time you run PartitionMagic, you are prompted to activate the
software. You can click Yes to activate the software immediately, or
you can use the software in demo mode and activate it later. To
activate the software later, click General > Activate Product from
the PartitionMagic menu bar. Then follow the directions in the
activation dialog.
3. GENERAL USAGE NOTES
- Using PartitionMagic Tools with Norton GoBack
If GoBack is enabled on your system and you use any of the tools
that are installed with PartitionMagic (for example, BootMagic,
PQBoot, PQBoot for Windows, PTEdit) you may experience conflict
errors.
For example, you should avoid using BootMagic (or any other
PartitionMagic tool) if GoBack is enabled. If you have
already used BootMagic to boot the active partition on your system
while GoBack in enable, you will get an error stating that
BootMagic cannot write to the Master Boot Record (MBR) and,
therefore, the operating system cannot be started.
To start the operating system in such cases, you must reboot the
computer. When the GoBack screen is displayed, disable (turn
off) GoBack.
While disabling GoBack allows BootMagic and all other PartitionMagic
tools to work properly, you will lose all GoBack history. If you
decide to re-enable GoBack, you should avoid using BootMagic or any
other PartitionMagic tools.
- Be aware that there is no undo (after clicking Apply) if you
merge two FAT or FAT32 partitions. You must be particularly
careful not to merge two primary partitions that include
operating systems, as your computer will not be bootable if
you do.
- Progress bars are an estimation only and may pause for several
minutes, even though PartitionMagic is still working correctly.
If you think your computer has locked up, please be patient and
allow PartitionMagic to finish the operation.
- You should set up removable media drives so that they are the
last drives on your system. Drives are assigned priorities as
follows: primary master, primary slave, secondary master,
secondary slave. You should not have a fixed hard drive
set up as the secondary master if you have a removable media
drive set up as the primary slave. If you have two IDE
controllers, you should connect removable media drives to
the second controller, after any hard drives. If you have a
RAID configuration, disconnect any removable media (such as
a Zip drive) before using PartitionMagic. If you do not
configure removable media drives as the last drives, you
will see disk numbering inconsistencies in the PartitionMagic
interface, and the wizards will not work on your system.
- Bad Sector Checking is OFF by default. PartitionMagic ships
with bad sector checking turned OFF by default. Modern hard
disks are designed to avoid bad sectors automatically.
However, if you feel that bad sectors may be a problem on your
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