Blue Screen after trying to shrink partition on Surface Pro 7?

monicat · March 15

I was using AOMEI to shrink my C drive. It told me it was going to disable bitlocker and restart, I said ok and walked away, now my device only boots to blue screens. That's fixable, but I'd still like to shrink my C drive. Does anyone know why AOMEI would cause that? Is there a way to avoid it? I'm on Surface Pro 7 using Windows 11 home. I can't get any more device specs until I'm done with a factory reset.

aiArtisan · March 16

Thank you for posting about this issue, Monicate. I understand you have Bitlocker on your PC, and now you have a bluescreen during startup.

For those who don't yet know, if you buy a PC with Microsoft Bitlocker already activated, or if you manually enable Bitlocker, you must print the 50 digit recovery key onto paper. MS also syncs the key to your microsoft.com account, you may create a recovery usb key, or if you are in a corporate environment, you may contact your IT Manager to use Azure to unlock it. If you have not already done one of these 4 things, your data will be lost forever.

This problem is not unique to Aomei. Thousands of Windows users each year are angered at Microsoft when they turn on their PC to find their files are locked, with no recovery key.

Aomei Partition Assistant is great software that I have used for years. Under normal circumstances, it is not necessary to use PA to shrink the Windows C partition, you may use the standard Windows Disk Management diskmgmt.msc. In rare and special circumstances, Disk Management will not want to shrink a partition, and then you could use PA. FAT32 and NTFS partitions may be shrank, but ExFAT partition is not shrinkable by any software.

If your files are important, please go to another working PC, and go to Onedrive.com, log into the same Microsoft account you were already logged into on your laptop, and you will see the Onedrive cloud files that you already had backed up.

"I can't get any more device specs until I'm done with a factory reset."

I am not sure what this means. If you want device specs, you may get that from the UEFI / BIOS / motherboard. The UEFI / BIOS exists outside of Windows and cannot be erased. See picture below to find your UEFI button.

Please go to another working PC, use an empty USB stick to create a PA USB stick. Put the PA USB stick into your laptop, and push the correct button from the picture below. Then post a screenshot from PA USB.

Thank you.

Partition Assistant WinPE USB:

Add custom drivers, such as NVMe, if necessary.

Image: https://www.aomeitech.com/forum/uploads/editor/pl/88ogkya6of81.png

monicat · March 18

Hi AiArtisan, thanks for your response but you may have misunderstood my question. I don't need help restoring my device, everything's back to normal now, I just want to know if it's possible to use AOMEI shrink my C drive without encountering a blue screen again. I don't understand what caused that issue in the first place. Any ideas? I did actually need a PA to shrink my drive, sometimes Microsoft won't allow C drives to shrink beyond a certain value even when there is space available I was hoping AOMEI would help with that.

aiArtisan · March 18

You happen to be the rare person where Windows did not want to shrink past an unmovable sector in your C partition. You may use PA to shrink further if you want. I have done that. Never use PreOS mode, if it asks.

Please always backup your entire disk using Backupper before shrinking partitions, or making changes to your disk. Backup is the most important thing in IT.

aiArtisan · March 18

When you used PA, did it ask you to choose between PreOS mode, and WinPE mode? Which mode did you choose?

admin · March 20

@Monicat, Please take a screenshot of Windows Disk Management or Partition Assistant so that we check the layout and status of your disks.
"now my device only boots to blue screens. That's fixable"---How did you fix it?

Blue Screen after trying to shrink partition on Surface Pro 7?

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