whooops, How to make win 7 internal drive bootable after a mistake?

Hi

On my HP Pavilion G7 notebook, running windows 7, there was two smaller partitions on the harddrive before the windows partition, and then there are, still, two smaller after the windows partition.

I did the mistake of deleting the two partitions prior to the win 7 partition, and adding them to the windows one to make it bigger.

I used Minitool Partition Wizard Home Edition to do the changes, which required a reboot to make the changes happen. When rebooting, the computer coudn't boot. Of course, I guess, how stupid aren't I feeling right now :-o

So, my question is, can I make the drive bootable again without re-installing windows.

Trying to repair using the windows installation DVD doesn't work, it says the installed version does not match the DVD version, for some reason, thought it is the correct DVD.

Thanks,

Thomasx

 

You have deleted both the partition used to restore the system to factory state and the partition containing the Win 7 boot files. Your best hope I believe lies in what you describe as the installation DVD. Was this supplied with the computer or did you acquire it independently?

 

The DVD came with another computer (the one I am on right now), but were used to install windows on the now "broken" computer, as that computer came pre-installed without DVD's and needed a re-installation not long ago.

 

What if I take the HD out and connect it as a USB drive to another PC, could I possibly restore atleast the Boot partition then, perhaps? How would I then do that?

 

Do you know version was installed at the time you deleted these partitions, Home Basic, Home Premium or Professional, 32 bit or 64 bit? And which version is on the dvd you have?

 

Professional 64 bit was installed, and that is also what I have on the DVD.

 

As the disk from which 7 was installed is now being rejected when you attempt a repair install I can't see any way forward other than a full reinstall. Also, as the installation DVD has previously been used on another computer you will almost certainly run into activation problems if you go down that road. There is a way around that but only at the expense of having the previous activation cancelled. Did you not have an activation issue when installing from this disk?

 

Don't remember now, I guess I just entered the correct product ID during install, I seem to recall doing that, maybe there was something to it, worked anyway.

 

So not likely to succeed with trying to fix via another computer then, connecting the HD via USB?

 

That will not help to restore lost partitions I'm afraid. About the only suggestion I can think of is to reboot into Partition Wizard and run its partition recovery feature. I've used that successfully before now, though not in similar circumstances. Might work though. You would need to create the bootable CD of course which can be downloaded as ISO and burnt.

 

You might be able to order a recovery disk
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=bph07143&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en#N108

This is what you'd use when you replace a hard drive and the proper partitions are not on the new hd. In essence, because you removed/wiped/deleted the partitions you needed, you have a "new" hard drive.

 

In the end it turned out to be really easy to recover the lost partitions.

I just got the program Active@ Partition Recovery that recovered the lost partitions by the press of a button, with the drive connected to another computer via a USB-cradle.

Thanx for the support