PartitionMagic Freezes

[struggling]

Have used various incarnations of PartitionMagic for years, and found it to be one of the most reliable apps.
I have v7 on my 'new' PC and it freezes totally on the initial splash screen - hard reset is the only way out.
My PC is mostly new, but I transferred to it my two old HDDs (120Gb - 5 partitions / 80Gb - single partition). I had used PM7 previously to reassign drive letters so that HDD0 had C,D,E,F,G, and HDD1 had H. Scrubbed the C partition and reinstalled WinXP. Now needed PM7 to reassign the drive letters again - froze completely on splash screen. Uninstalled / reinstalled - exactly the same. Formatted C:, reinstalled WinXP and PM7 - same. Did this several times (even with PM7 being the only installed app) - same.
Then FDISKed entire HDD0, single 120Gb partition, WinXP, PM7 - same. Pulled out hair - same.
Installation of PM7 is faultless and all subsidiary tools run OK - just the main prog freezes (also, the bootable recovery disks won't load, so I can't use that way in). Any other installed apps work OK.
Anybody experienced anything like this with PM, please?
Cheers.
(Epox EP-8K7A / Athlon 1600 / 512Mb DDR)

[kohly]

I had the same thing happen with v7 and Windows XP.

Have you gotten far enough to create the boot disks?
During installation, you are required to use empty floppies to make boot disks. Make sure to create them.
If you have created the boot disks, it will work using it that way.
Also, try to open it from the dierctory in program files.

[struggling]

kohly, thanks.

As I said, the recovery disks wouldn't load either, but digging around in the PowwerQuest Knowledge Base, I found that the second of the two disks must not be write-protected. Mine was w-p (quite reasonably, I think). Undid this and PM7 booted up without problem. Converted to FAT32 on a whim (WinXP was installed on NTFS) and the program works fine under WinXP again. Must be some glitch with NTFS.

Cheers.