Please get one of your engineers to read this report carefully, if it takes you
a long time to read it all, think how long it took me to put it together!
I believe I have included all the information for you tell me what has happened.
If there is any more info you need, I will get it to you immediately.

I have included the following attachments:

mbr.txt - a hexdump of my MBR as it currently is, this is also included in
          the fdisk.txt file

fdisk.txt - a log of my interaction with the Linux fdisk command,
            by looking at this you can see the exact details of how my disk
            is currently partitioned. fdisk gives 5 hexdumps, 1 for the MBR,
            3 for the boot sectors of the 3 primary partitions, and 1 for
            the boot sector of the extented partition

The Problems
============

1) My laptop can no longer do a "suspend to disk". It can only do a "suspend to
   RAM", it's meant to be able to do both. There is something the BIOS doesn't
   like about the way my partition table has been altered by PM4/BM and even-
   though the suspend partition is definitely there, when I activate the APM
   suspend function (and suspend to disk has been set as the user selected
   suspend mode in the BIOS setup), it suspends to RAM instead.

2) NT won't boot, the installation is still there, but it's useless

3) Before NT stopped booting, but after installing PM/BM my E: drive letter
     would intermittently disappear under Explorer, I had to continuously re-
     assign the drive letter to use any data on that drive.

Hardware Details
================
Machine:        Dell Inspiron 7500-700VT
RAM:            128Mb
Drive type:     IBM-DJSA-220
Drive Geometry: 2584 cylinders , 240 heads , 63 sectors
Drive Size:     2584 * 240 * 63 * 512 = 20,003,880,960 bytes = 18.63 Gb
BIOS:           PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0

Software Details
================
PM4 & BootMagic(BM)
Windows NT4 workstation SP5
Redhat Linux 6 installed, after problem 1) was observed.

How the Problems Arose
======================
When the machine arrived from Dell, it was partitioned as shown in the diagram.
My aim was to use PM to create space for a Linux installation and use BM to
dual boot between them. I then installed PM4 and BM, as soon as this was done,
everytime I booted the machine I noticed the BIOS complaining with an error
message:

"the amount of system memory has changed or the suspend to disk partition is
absent"

Clearly I hadn't changed the machine's RAM and the suspend to disk partition
was/is still there. The suspend to disk function now no longer works. The BIOS
thinks the partition is missing, so everytime I try to do a suspend to disk,
the machine does a suspend to RAM instead, which is no good as it drains the
battery quickly, unlike a suspend to disk.

Then I repartitioned the disk according to the diagram. PM gave many different
error messages while I did this and I had to try several times before it went
ahead and did the re-partitioning.

Then I uninstalled BM thinking that would get rid of the BIOS error message
about the suspend to disk partition being absent. That didn't work, the error
message still occurred, and the suspend to disk function still didn't work.

I contacted Dell technical support, whose engineers could only be described as
computer illterate. For this kind of problem they just haven't a clue, I don't
think they even know what a partition table is. They suggested I run the Phoenix
utility called phdisk(.exe) which is meant to be run from a DOS bootable floppy.
Phdisk is meant to create or recreate the suspend to disk partition, in the
event of this kind of problem. It didn't work and complained that it couldn't
recreate the partition (which of course is there but the BIOS doesn't seem to
recognise it).

Then I installed Redhat Linux 6, which has it's own boot manager program
called 'lilo'. Using this I am able to successfully dual boot between Linux
and NT. I used this for several weeks constantly switching between the 2 OSes
without any problems with either.

One day I decide to alter my partitions, I boot to NT and run PM. As soon
as the program starts I get the error dialogue "Error 255 Init failed".
Ok fine, PM doesn't work, so I expect your software to just exit and not
touch my hard disk if it can't initialize. Then I reboot and startup NT again,
this time at the blue NT boot screen I get an 'autocheck fail message' and
NT fails to boot. After trying to boot NT again, this time when it gets to
the blue NT boot screen it prints no error message and the machine completely
crashes, ie.  Ctrl-Alt-Del will not restart.

What has your software done to my hard disk? I am able to dual boot fine
between NT and Linux, one day I boot to NT, run up PM4 and it fails to start
(giving the error dialogue described above), and then from that moment onwards
my NT installation is totally ruined. If PM4 can't initialise it should exit
cleanly, and not change anything, instead it must have altered something,
as there is no other possible explanation. Between running PM4 (when I got the
Error 255 dialogue) and trying to reboot NT, I didn't do anything, and I
certainly did not boot Linux in between, so that OS can't be blamed.

Questions
=========
If PowerQuest is not able to solve these problems, then can you please try and
answer these questions so I can help myself. Questions 5) & 6) reiterate the
main point of this email.

1) Does a PM4 installation without Boot Magic touch the MBR in anyway?
   If yes, what exactly does it do to the MBR?

2) Does a Boot Magic installation touch the MBR?
   If yes, does it alter the program code, or does it alter the partition
   table data, or both? The partition table data is by convention considered
   to be between 0x1BE - 0x1FD of the MBR.

3) If a user installs BM and then uninstalls it, what happens to the MBR?

4) Do you agree or disagree, these could be the only possible explanations
   for the problems I have experienced:
   a) PM4 or BM or both alter the MBR incorrectly
   b) the Phoenix BIOS incorrectly interprets the way your products have
      altered the MBR.

5) Why did my APM suspend to disk function work, then I install PM4/BM
   and it doesn't work anymore, even without running up the programs.

6) Why did my NT installation boot correctly, then I start PM, get the
   '255 init error' dialog, and then NT no longer boots? Of course my NT
   installation booted correctly or I wouldn't have been able to get into NT
   to start PM! This is why Error 255 doesn't make sense. Your website says it
   means that the partition table may be corrupt, how then was I able to boot
   NT ok to start PM?