Partition Removal

Sully

Quick one. Something obvious I just cant place my finger on.

Laptop HDD divided into two partitions. One with Vista and the other Windows 7. On removing the Vista partition, Windows doesn't boot (Missing Operating System). Bart PE seems to suggest there is no partition at all.

However, the windows disk I have wont let me boot and install. It seems to only install for a loaded Windows.

Any ideas?

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

Quick one. Something obvious I just cant place my finger on.

Laptop HDD divided into two partitions. One with Vista and the other Windows 7. On removing the Vista partition, Windows doesn't boot (Missing Operating System). Bart PE seems to suggest there is no partition at all.

However, the windows disk I have wont let me boot and install. It seems to only install for a loaded Windows.

Any ideas?

Can you not boot off the Windows 7 DVD at all . Try boot off it and click the repair your computer link, usually bellow the big "Install Now" button. Next click on Open command prompt and type the following commands,

bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /fixmbr

When done take out the windows 7 cd and type reboot and see if Windows starts up then

Nick

Sully

Nope. Windows reads the DVD alright, before moving onto the harddrive and reporting that there is no operating system. Knoppix Live CD wont work on this machine to check it out (Cant find knoppix file system).

Also when you run the CD when Windows is loaded, there was never a re installation option on this disc either.

Sully

I have an XP disc I can boot from though. There is command prompt on that to run the repair, isn't there?

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

Nope. Windows reads the DVD alright, before moving onto the harddrive and reporting that there is no operating system. Knoppix Live CD wont work on this machine to check it out (Cant find knoppix file system).

Also when you run the CD when Windows is loaded, there was never a re installation option on this disc either.

Thats very weird, is it a generic Windows 7 DVD or is it a manufacturer customised one? It could be an issue with the DVD drive in the machine also.
Is there a boot menu option on your laptop? Somestimes pressing [F12] at startup lets you choose the DVD drive as a source, really you should be able to boot off it, if it goes straight to OS not found it hasn't tried booting off the Disc, seems odd as Bart PE worked for you though

Nick

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

I have an XP disc I can boot from though. There is command prompt on that to run the repair, isn't there?

An XP one wont work as XP uses an older bootloader, try downloading a Windows 7 DVD here, burn it to a blank DVD+/-R and running the above commands

Nick

Sully

Its a backup copy I have, cant locate the original. I was in touch with Microsoft about the Windows installation on the machine as it was anyway as some updates couldn't install. When the reinstall option wasn't available, they just said go the full way (format and reinstall). Which I had done, and was removing the old partition but it seems to stop Windows from loading now.

The DVD is first in the booting order.

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

Its a backup copy I have, cant locate the original. I was in touch with Microsoft about the Windows installation on the machine as it was anyway as some updates couldn't install. When the reinstall option wasn't available, they just said go the full way (format and reinstall). Which I had done, and was removing the old partition but it seems to stop Windows from loading now.

The DVD is first in the booting order.

No worries, could be the disc has degraded, try my advice above re-downloading an iso on a working machine and retry my above commands

Nick

Sully

Might have to download them elsewhere, cant seem to download the files. Typical!

Will let ya know how I progress! Thanks

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

Might have to download them elsewhere, cant seem to download the files. Typical!

Will let ya know how I progress! Thanks

32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium x86 ISO

Digital River: http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65732/X15-65732.iso
64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium x64 ISO

Digital River: http://msft-dnl.digitalrivercontent.net/msvista/pub/X15-65733/X15-65733.iso

I think its ok to post these, as they wont work without a proper activation key but if a mod feels its risky edit away. Don't worry if either don't match your edition, just pick x86 if you had 32 bit windows installed or x64 is 64 bit windows installed. The links work fine.
Even if you have Ultimate edition, the disc will still allow you get into a command prompt and run the above commands,

Good luck

Nick

Sully

Digital River is just very slow, but got the ISO in the end and burned it up and give it a whirl..

Right booted from ISO, did the repairs as above which completed succesfully. But Windows asked to do its own repair but was unable to do so in the end saying "boot sector for system disk partition is corrupt". Bootrec.exe /ScanOs picked up an installation on drive D, so I asked it to rebuild the BCD (Bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd) with this installation which failed saying it didn't recongise the file system. Fair enough, ran chkdsk /r /x on the drive and it recongised it as NTFS. That's a little slow, but arah, what can I do.

Worth noting that no operating system is displayed when I go to the repair option.

Ill post back when the repair is done and try rebuild the BCD again (assuming it repaired ok). If that fails, im stumped.

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

Worth noting that no operating system is displayed when I go to the repair option.

Thats not good . I have come accross some OEMs who install windows arseways, and it could have been some vital boot files were on the Vista partition. No clue though, this is a strange one. I'd use a Ubuntu live CD to backup all your stuff and just format now tbh, messing with partitions can get messy, as which happened here unfortunately

Nick

Sully

All the stuff is backed up, which is handy. Its on Step 4 of chkdsk but a lot of files need processing so its taking a while.

leonil7

2 partitions, but actually 1 hard disk. are you sure you did not delete the hard disk while removing vista?

worst case scenario, just install a new win7. you can even combine the 2 partitions into one, if you will 'fresh' install. should be a shorter time than repairing in this case. but i suppose you have backed up your critical data somewhere else (external usb) before removing vista did you? otherwise ..charge to experience.

Sully

I used software to format the partition and then delete it while Windows 7 was loaded. It was when I shut down and rebooted that this problem arose. Besides, it seems Windows found the install on drive D.

Fully backed up anyway so ill let this chkdsk work itself out and will do a fresh install if it fails.

yoyo

Sully wrote: »

All the stuff is backed up, which is handy. Its on Step 4 of chkdsk but a lot of files need processing so its taking a while.

Always good to know, not sure chkdsk will help but wont hurt running all the same, just reinstall windows, delete all the partitions until the entire drive is refered to as "Unpartition Space" then just install on it, can't stand when manufacturers create these 2 partitions on new machines,

Nick

hearny

Can you connect the drive to a working computer.

Run the program ptedit32, select the hard drive that is causing the issue and upload a screenshot.

Another option would be to download and boot to GParted and see what partitions show up.

Sully

chkdsk reported no errors so I just reinstalled Windows 7. It had the partition with Windows 7 (Primary), a system partition and a partition with the OEM. Iv deleted all bar the OEM, and installed fresh which re-created a partition for system files. Just restoring the backup and ill run with all the Windows updates

Its a laptop hearny, but I have the equipment here to plug it in as an external drive to a working machine. ptedit32 and GParted are something ill take a look at though, handy to have as I do repairs and upgrades myself.

You could also use 'supergrub'.