XP won't boot after defrag

[stevejum]

I just spent 4 days creating a clean installation and configuration of XP Pro SP2.

My mistake was I decided to have Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.5 Professional defrag the boot disk ... I was then going to run a full system backup.

I asked Hard Disk Manager to defrag the boot disk, I let it use the default options (except I selected do not save the contents of the pagefile).

When I returned from cooking dinner, my system will no longer boot. I see the XP start up screen (graphics) for several seconds, then the system restarts back to the BIOS screen. I've tried booting in Safe Mode, Boot Logging, etc, and in all cases, I get 2-3 seconds of the XP graphics screen, and then I'm back to a restart and the BIOS screens.

I have no idea if Paragon's defrag completed or not, all I know is my clean XP installation is no longer bootable.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to troubleshoot this? Can I boot with some tool, so I can recover what was once a good installation?

I would love to think this isn't Paragon's fault, but I've rebooted dozens of times as I installed the 30 applications, and hand crafted all the configuration parameters of this system. It was only after I asked Paragon to defrag my disk that the disk became unusable.

The only similar complaint I can find is the post here saying that Vista won't boot after a Paragon defrag. I did exactly what that fellow complained about ... I used the XP defrag utility, which indicated it couldn't defrag the system files that were currently in use. So I followed the XP defrag by telling Paragon to reboot and defrag the system disk. Just like the Vista guy, my system disk now is trashed.

HELP!

[stevejum]

I moved the XP system disk that won't boot and mounted it on another XP system. Mounted there, I can access it through Explorer with no problems.

So, I ran a disk recovery program against it (Restorer2000 Pro 3.3), and it shows there are suddenly 2 partitions on this 186GB disk:
- The original partion, that I named "System Disk", FS type NTFS, with a start location of 31.5KB (the same start location as all the other mounted disks), and a size of 186.3GB
- A new partition, evidently created by Paragon, with no name, no FS type, with a start location of 0, and a size of 186.3GB.

When I use the file recovery program to examine this new/2nd partition, it contains all the same files as the original partion.

I have no idea what is happening at XP boot time, but it's no wonder XP is confused since Paragon has created a 2nd partition that appears to overlay the original partition.

Does anyone have any ideas how I can delete this 2nd partition without destroying the "underlying" original partition? And any idea what I'd need to do to reestablish a valid MBR?

[stevejum]

Sorry, if it helps anyone fix this bug in Hard Disk Manager ... one more piece of data on the new partition that Paragon created when I asked it to defrag my system XP disk:

According to Restorer2000 Pro:
- The original partion that was mounted by XP is named "D:" ... because it was mounted as the D: drive by XP
- The 2nd partition, that was created by Paragon, is named "Disk2-01".

[ostrich]

That all really looks weird. And what does Hard Disk Manager now say about that disk? Install it on that another XP machine, and run to check what partitions it shows. Also I would recommend you to send log files to support.

[Alan Mac]

This was the reason my system went t"t" up yesterday, by trying a basic defrag with Paragon HDM. I have since re-installed windows etc, etc then tried the backup and now that is not restoring (another thread).

Does anything work with paragon????