Hi all,
Well, I managed to comprehensively bugger my Acer Aspire 5633WLMI last night, by deleting the PQSERVICE partition. I was looking to get rid of the partition as I will be using Acronis TrueImage for backup and restore after resizing my partitions with Partition Magic. To cut a long story short, my pc wouldn't boot, I can't recreate the partitions how they should be so I'm restoring a backup of my wife's Acer to mine, then I'll restore my original backuip - and start again.
I would like to know what steps I need to take to permanently and SAFELY remove the PQSERVICE parition. Here's what I've gleaned so far:
1) The PQSERVICE is for the backup and restore functionality provided by Acer
2) The PQSERVICE probably contains the MBR, seeing as my pc didn't boot correctly afterwards
3) If I'm deleting a partition, I need to change boot.ini to point to the correct parition
4) I may have to change the type of partition from 0xC to 7 or 12 (?)
So, with Partition Magic and True Image at my disposal, how can I safely remove the PQSERVICE partition? I'll leave resizing and converting the partitions to Partition Magic, although I am curious as to which block size I should use...
Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm a bit miffed that Acer supply a Vista-ready PC with bloody FAT32 partitions and antiquated Backup and Restore software. And no, I can't "just leave the partition alone" - if I've got a 5gb partition that's of no use, I want to use that space.
Hmmm, could I use Partition Magic to merge PQSERVICE into ACERDATA after editing boot.ini? Also, if I change (merge / delete) paritions, doesn't that affect parition numbering for use in boot.ini?
Ta all,
Mike K.
Well, I managed to comprehensively bugger my Acer Aspire 5633WLMI last night, by deleting the PQSERVICE partition. I was looking to get rid of the partition as I will be using Acronis TrueImage for backup and restore after resizing my partitions with Partition Magic. To cut a long story short, my pc wouldn't boot, I can't recreate the partitions how they should be so I'm restoring a backup of my wife's Acer to mine, then I'll restore my original backuip - and start again.
I would like to know what steps I need to take to permanently and SAFELY remove the PQSERVICE parition. Here's what I've gleaned so far:
1) The PQSERVICE is for the backup and restore functionality provided by Acer
2) The PQSERVICE probably contains the MBR, seeing as my pc didn't boot correctly afterwards
3) If I'm deleting a partition, I need to change boot.ini to point to the correct parition
4) I may have to change the type of partition from 0xC to 7 or 12 (?)
So, with Partition Magic and True Image at my disposal, how can I safely remove the PQSERVICE partition? I'll leave resizing and converting the partitions to Partition Magic, although I am curious as to which block size I should use...
Any help and advice would be greatly appreciated. I'm a bit miffed that Acer supply a Vista-ready PC with bloody FAT32 partitions and antiquated Backup and Restore software. And no, I can't "just leave the partition alone" - if I've got a 5gb partition that's of no use, I want to use that space.
Hmmm, could I use Partition Magic to merge PQSERVICE into ACERDATA after editing boot.ini? Also, if I change (merge / delete) paritions, doesn't that affect parition numbering for use in boot.ini?
Ta all,
Mike K.
