Problems with VISTA Shrink process. Please HELP!

Man, this is a mess!
I don't know where to start... At the beginning I guess... which seems like ages ago but it was only a few hours ago...

Okay, I wanted to shrink my 650gig C drive down to 85 or so. I read a tutorial on the net about how to do it and they said that you could do it by defragging with Perfect Disk, defragging the System Files with it, and then performing a few other steps which would allow you to shrink C to a lot smaller than the 350 gigs it was originally allowing me to do.

The steps were to turn off hibernation and delete the files, turn off system restore and delete files, and turn off the page file.

Then perform a defrag and then a system file defrag on boot up, then shrink.

I did this and then repeated the "rinse, lather, repeat" about 3 times to get my C drive down to 85 gigs and leave the biggest part of my 750gig HD for archiving only. Seemed like a good idea... at the time...

So the Shrink process went well. Each time I did a System File defrag with Perfect Disk, figuring that each time the drive shrunk, it could move the MFT file a little closer in thus allowing for more shrinkability. It seemed to work.

After I got C drive down to 85 gigs, I immediately restarted and re-stored my page file settings to "let Vista manage" it, and re-started System Restore and created a new restore point.

But when I re-set the page file I got the message: "Another page file exists, do you want to replace it with this one?" I said, sure, why not? I have a feeling I should have said no. But I moved on...

NOW I had a 600 gig unallocated section that I needed to format to NTFS. But Vista Disk Mgmt said I could not format it because I already had the limit of 4 partitions:
1. The EISA drive
2. OS C drive
3. Recovery Drive D - came with the Dell
4. Rip Process Download R - I created with Paragon Partition the other day
then
5. Unallocated - the partition I just created by shrinking C drive with Vista

I knew there was a limit on the number of partitions you could have, which is why I fired up Paragon Disc Manager, which is supposed to do this kind of thing, right?

Well, when I tried to use Paragon via Windows it would not work and wanted me to put in the Recovery Disk to do it. So I did. But I don't know if my recovery drive went bad since I used it a few days ago, or what, but I could not get it to boot. I got a message saying the DVD drive was not accessible. I had used it earlier to look at the disk and it was working fine.

Now I began to wonder if all the changes I made: defragging sys files, deletion of page file, hibernation file, etc. may have caused this problem...?

I tried re-inserting the disc and I ended up with a black screen with only the cursor flashing in the top right. I could not go back, I could not go forward, I could not pass Go nor collect $200. I was stuck like a fly on flypaper.

I did a hard shut down and then restarted and tried again. Again I could not access the disc and again I had to do a hard shut down, and this time I let it boot back to Windows.

Once back to Windows, I tried to look at the contents of the Paragon Recovery CD and when I did, my computer was very slow to respond. It froze up and I got a message that said Windows Explorer was not responding. I closed out of the window and tried again. Same thing: Error pop-up window: "Windows Explorer is not responding".

I closed out and decided to try the Windows version of Paragon Manager again. It should be able to just format a drive in Windows, no?

So I opened it up and found that as before, the Format option was greyed out for that partition. So I got the idea, "Maybe I can "create a partition" using that unformatted area but instead of creating a partition within it, I'll just create it as an entire partition". So I tried that but when I got to the final step I got a pop-up error - actually 2 at the same time:

One said "The restart that has been requested cannot be performed under Vista 64-bit. Please use Recovery CD." And at the same time (See jpg) I got the message, "Virtual Disk Service stopped working and was closed. A problem caused the app. to stop working correctly."

So I restarted and put in my 2nd copy of Recovery CD and gave it one more shot.

This time it booted into the cd and I was able to get to the Paragon Disc Manager interface.

I tried the same thing as above: to create a partition over the unformatted partition, and this time it worked. Finally! But at what cost??

I booted back into Vista and Vista immediately gave me a pop-up window showing me these 3 errors: the 2 Explorer errors above and a new one:

"IDT PC Audio stopped working". And, sure enough, I had no audio.

But now, magically, my audio is back working and I have had no further errors.

But I have a feeling that I will... I think I must have screwed things up. In my defense I read this procedure about the page file and restore points deletion and system file defrag etc. in several seemingly respectable tech sites on the net. In fact, Perfect Disk itself recommends doing the defrags and then shrinking. They didn't say it was okay to do it 3 times in a row but then they didn't say not to, either. Perfect disk does defrag the page file but they did not recommend deleting it, I got that from a couple different "how to shrink" web pages. But the sources said that it was fine to delete it, it would come back as soon as I re-set it in System.

So here are my error messages that I copied from Windows re Windows Explorer freezing up and the audio error:

"--1st EXPLORER PROBLEM--
Product
Windows Explorer

Problem
Stopped responding and was closed

Date
4/18/2009 12:04 AM

Status
Not Reported

Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppTermFailureEvent
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Files that help describe the problem
Version.txt


--2nd EXPLORER PROBLEM--
Product
Windows Explorer

Problem
Stopped responding and was closed

Date
4/18/2009 12:07 AM

Status
Not Reported

Description
A problem caused this program to stop interacting with Windows.

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: AppTermFailureEvent
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033

Files that help describe the problem
Version.txt

--AUDIO PROBLEM--
Product
IDT PC Audio

Problem
Stopped working

Date
4/18/2009 12:36 AM

Status
Not Reported

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: STacSV64.exe
Application Version: 1.0.6017.1
Application Timestamp: 4835e75e
Fault Module Name: msvcrt.dll
Fault Module Version: 7.0.6001.18000
Fault Module Timestamp: 4791ad6b
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0000000000003237
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 39b1
Additional Information 2: cd356529eaae0727bbb34e304627cf80
Additional Information 3: db08
Additional Information 4: fb967711e114209fef336ac52fb63c44

Files that help describe the problem
Version.txt
AppCompat.txt
memory.hdmp
minidump.mdmp"

Anyone have any ideas? What do I need to do to get back a properly functioning Vista? How badly did I screw up? And what is "Virtual Disk Service" and why did it stop working?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this mess! And sorry for the super-long post but believe me, it's much better reading it than living it!

Update: Okay I looked at my Windows>System logs and it appears that the attached jpg shows that it was simply a bad compact disc, so that error was unrelated to anything else. And I'm guessing that because the computer was trying so hard to read the bad cd, that's why it froze up on the black screen with just a cursor.

Specs:
Windows Home Premium 64bit
Dell XPS 430
750 gig SATA hard drive
Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Processor
ATI Radeon HD 3650

Hi,

I feel your pain,

What I would suggest after all that repeated disk shrinking et al would be to run (in an elevated command prompt

system file check System Files - SFC Command - Vista Forums

you may also want to run a chkdsk command on the system drive, if this finds errors then running chkdsk /f will clean up any remnants of file fragments

Thanks Barman, I'll do that. Your icon is the way I felt last night!
..............
Okay... I did the sfcscan.
Here are snips of the scan results and the log file.
I am not sure what it means. It seems to me that although there are many files listed in the log, they were all repaired, and the only one not repaired might be "tcpmon.ini", but it looks like at the end of the log it says it was repaired too, but I'm not sure if it was, or if it is only saying that it tried to. Look at the bottom of the log where it says:
"2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002b5 [SR] Repairing 1 components
2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002b6 [SR] Beginning Verify and Repair transaction
2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002b8 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:20{10}]"tcpmon.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Printing-StandardPortMonitor-TCPMonINI, Version = 6.0.6001.18000, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch

2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002ba [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:20{10}]"tcpmon.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Printing-StandardPortMonitor-TCPMonINI, Version = 6.0.6001.18000, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch

2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002bd [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32"\[l:20{10}]"tcpmon.ini"; source file in store is also corrupted
2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002bf [SR] Repair complete
2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002c0 [SR] Committing transaction
2009-04-18 13:29:12, Info CSI 000002c4 [SR] Verify and Repair Transaction completed. All files and registry keys listed in this transaction have been successfully repaired

So does this mean that at least this aspect of my mess has been given a clean bill of health now?

In addition to the jpg showing there is also the text of the sfcdetails.txt, below.

I await further instructions. Sure glad I found this board, you guys are fantastic! (and your reputations have been added to, accordingly).

pdsnickles said:

Thanks Barman, I'll do that. Your icon is the way I felt last night!

Click to expand...

It's Coffee Honest

barman58 said:

pdsnickles said:

Thanks Barman, I'll do that. Your icon is the way I felt last night!

Click to expand...

It's Coffee Honest

Click to expand...

Oh, so the bar in "barman" is a coffee bar. I see...

Oh, and I'm still getting this Audio error:

(Yet my audio is working just fine, it seems...)

(Should I run Dell's Vista Reinstallation dvd? It would not make me have to re-install all my software, would it?)

It depends on what restoration package you have from Dell - If it's just the standard re-image package it will set it to exactly the state it was when it left the factory - with all the bloat included and all your software and updates , missing .

Dell do sometimes provide, (normally on business systems rather than domestic), an actual OS install DVD and if you have this it's possible to do a repair install which will reset some item s but leave programs intact

Repair Install For Vista

I'm going to check with Dell but it looks like I have a repair disc. It says:
"Reinstallation DVD Windows Vista Home Premium 64BIT SP1", which is what I have installed.
It then says (on the disc label):
This software is already installed on your computer. Use this dvd only to reinstall the operating system on a Dell PC. This dvd is not for reinstallation of software or drivers (I have another one for that.)
So it looks like I might be able to do a Vista repair without affecting my software...

Okay, this is weird... What may have happened, at least to some extent, is that several things happened as I was doing the shrink process that had NO relation to the shrink process:
1) the black screen at restart as I tried to read Paragon Partion Manager's cd to operate outside of Vista may have been just caused by a cd trying to read a bad sector while in restart mode. My taking it out and re-inserting it, etc...
2) A similar Explorer hang occured as I restarted into Vista and again tried to read the cd.
So those 2 MAY have been caused by the bad cd. I certainly have had strange behavior with bad cd's, before with XP...
3) the Audio error I got seems to be related to a bad driver for my audio device and though I had never had any problem with it before it chose that moment to give me an error. I went to Dell's drivers site and it has an URGENT download for just that audio device's driver!

Can someone now tell me if the text file in my first post indicates that the bad system file was REPAIRED or not repaired. To me the way it was written left it unclear. If that was repaired as well as all the other system log errors I found then maybe there are no issues at all...

I have used my computer all day with no problems or strange behavior except for one of those same audio errors (before I downloaded and instsalled the driver Dell urged me to install).

Hi,

It would appear to me that the system repair has repaired everything except the one file. C:\Windows\system32\tcpmon.ini This file was corrupted and the recovery copy was also bad.

The file itself is related to network printing - being a list of known printer / port setups which is used when setting up remote network printing ports.

It is quite possible that unless you actually create a remote printer port on a network you will never have any need to access the file.

I don't have access to a 64 bit vista ATM but have included the file from Windows 7 7077 x64 for you to have a look at
View attachment TCPmon.ini.zip

You may want to check the condition of the damaged file (you may be able to copy from a working Vista x64 install or the file I include will probably be a usable replacement), it's a text file s no special software required.

With the system in general If you are running OK I would tend to leave things be rather than risk any possible problems with the repair install.

And as for the DELL sound driver perhaps they saw your post here and put the file up for download :huh: - Not likely but you would be surprised at the status of some of our members here :D

Thanks a million, Barman! I don't know what I would do without this forum! You guys have helped me get through this dark forest known as "Vista" which has me off-kilter. I was pretty confident with XP but this Vista is an odd bird, to me. I'll just leave it the file - and the computer - alone as long as I don't get error messages. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
(In fact, if I had it to do over again, I don't think I'd have shrunk my C drive at all. Though I do like having it shrunk, so it is quicker to defragment and I can keep all my files on my other partitions.)

All I would say about working with partition sizes within Vista is that although there is an application in windows - I always use a 3rd party solution and that's not a dig at Vista but basic common sense.

A 3rd party application normally runs outside of the OS to do major moves and such,and is therefore not concerned with system files but treats them as simple data

I always feel that working on a system from within that system is a bit like sawing a tree branch when you're sat on it ,

Anyway enough rambling - glad to hear your up and running :D

barman58 said:

I always feel that working on a system from within that system is a bit like sawing a tree branch when you're sat on it ,

Click to expand...

NOW you tell me! Where were you when I was talking about this crazy idea?! :huh:
That's a good analogy, though! What partitioner do you use and do you have Vista x64? Because I had problems with both Paragon and with Acronis, which is why I went with Vista!

Anyway enough rambling - glad to hear your up and running :D[/quote]

My Reliability rating is down to a 6.66 after the crashes possibly related to my Paragon disc with bad sector and 2 Explorer crashes right after that. And then that audio problem which lasted a couple days...

But it SEEMS to be fixed so hopefully all that is behind me!