Wanting to use unallocated space on my hard drive, any dos and don'ts?

Here's a screenshot of Partition Wizard:

ACMDogfight1997 said:

Do you mean a system restore point? I don't know if I can backup 766 GB of data somewhere.

Until your prepared to back up your system and data, I would not mess with any partitions or any other disk operations you can easily lose or corrupt your data.

Clintlgm said:

Until your prepared to back up your system and data, I would not mess with any partitions or any other disk operations you can easily lose or corrupt your data.

Well, I thank you for your warning because now Windows won't boot after I was prompted to restart to apply changes to Partition Wizard. Fortunately, I transferred all my important files to my laptop and I have a Windows 10 installation disc that came with my PC when I bought it. Upon going into Windows Setup, it appears that C: has been untouched, but I need to install Windows somewhere to access them again:


Ignore the bottom photo, I'm not use to sending pictures from my phone to a PC.

I'm guessing I should install Windows on the 100 GB partition?

ACMDogfight1997 said:

I'm guessing I should install Windows on the 100 GB partition?

That'd be unnecessary...assuming all your files and Windows data is there you can either use startup repair or restore the master boot record and hopefully be able to just boot into Windows like usual...

Try clicking Repair your computer and then startup repair. If that doesn't fix your problem, look into restoring your MBR.
Fix the MBR – Guide for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10

(not liable for damages to your PC, although I don't think damage can be done while attempting to fix your MBR)

I always delete all the partitions and then let Windows install on the free space. However, this may not be the best choice for you. If you want to try to fix the booting issue, there are other methods you can try. If you are wanting to start fresh, then by all means delete the partitions you see and choose the one large free space left for windows. It will create all the necessary partitions during install.

Well, for those who just replied to my previous two posts, I'm sorry but I just installed Windows on the 100 GB partition before I any of you responded because I was getting impatient. After this, everything succeeded and I was able to access everything I had before, albeit it's a different partition now (it's D: instead of C:). So by then, I had to deal with getting all my stuff back to the proper partition and I did so by managing to find and launch Partition Wizard again to merge C: and D: but there's a new problem now, unfortunately. After letting Partition Wizard do it's thing following a reboot, I was able to have Windows boot again and login again, but after doing so took a few minutes of "Preparing Windows" and eventually I came to a black screen with only the cursor visible.

I let it sit for a while to see if it would do anything else and unfortunately, after several or so minutes, still nothing's happened. Now I'm afraid I may have lost everything I had on it (except the stuff that I copied and transferred on to my laptop) because if the merging didn't properly happen and/or I don't know where else to install Windows again if I have to. I hope I'm wrong.

ACMDogfight1997 said:

Well, for those who just replied to my previous two posts, I'm sorry but I just installed Windows on the 100 GB partition before I any of you responded because I was getting impatient. After this, everything succeeded and I was able to access everything I had before, albeit it's a different partition now (it's D: instead of C:). So by then, I had to deal with getting all my stuff back to the proper partition and I did so by managing to find and launch Partition Wizard again to merge C: and D: but there's a new problem now, unfortunately. After letting Partition Wizard do it's thing following a reboot, I was able to have Windows boot again and login again, but after doing so took a few minutes of "Preparing Windows" and eventually I came to a black screen with only the cursor visible.

I let it sit for a while to see if it would do anything else and unfortunately, after several or so minutes, still nothing's happened. Now I'm afraid I may have lost everything I had on it (except the stuff that I copied and transferred on to my laptop) because if the merging didn't properly happen and/or I don't know where else to install Windows again if I have to. I hope I'm wrong.

According to a Microsoft forum moderator, this type of issue can happen as a result of corrupted or missing Windows files. If you have the chance, try running the Windows install disc/flash drive and seeing if the partitions were created/merged successfully, with the expected storage sizes/free space/used space, etc. If that is the case, you might be able to launch startup repair or (if startup repair doesn't fix the issue) command prompt and using the "sfc /scannow" command (without quotation marks).

z609 said:

According to a Microsoft forum moderator, this type of issue can happen as a result of corrupted or missing Windows files. If you have the chance, try running the Windows install disc/flash drive and seeing if the partitions were created/merged successfully, with the expected storage sizes/free space/used space, etc. If that is the case, you might be able to launch startup repair or (if startup repair doesn't fix the issue) command prompt and using the "sfc /scannow" command (without quotation marks).

Well, the partitions were merged as the partition with my files is now 930 GB in size (as opposed to 830 GB previously).

Performed Startup Repair, says it couldn't repair.

Launched Command Prompt and entered sfc /scannow, says "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation."

So now what?