Can't boot Windows 7 - blinking underscore

Hi all, I'm really worried, and could do with your help. :cry

I'm sorry, but this is a very long story, so if you want you to skip to the end I've put a summary. I have also split it into three parts.

Part one is about what I did a few days ago, which may still be causing the problem, but the computer has been working fine until now, so I don't think it has much to do with it. Part two is about what I did yesterday and today. Part three is about what I've since Windows 7 has stopped being bootable.

I have two hard-drives, and I'm referring to them here as hard-drive 1 and 2.

Before I started messing about I had a computer running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit (installed on hard-drive 1), and I was using hard-drive 2 for storing files.

I haven't done a back-up recently, so the main thing I want to do is recover my files.

My hardware:
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3
Graphics Card: XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 (this one)
Hard-drive 1: WD Caviar 3TB Green
Hard-drive 2: WD 3TB Desktop Green

I was trying to do a dual-boot of Windows 7 (Ultimate 64-bit), XP (Professional 32-bit) and Linux Mint (version 16 64-bit).

Part one:
A few days ago I tried to install Windows XP onto hard-drive 2. Before I did this I made two partitions on hard-drive 2 using the Windows 7 Disk Management tool. Both were 100gb. I named one of them Windows XP (and gave it the letter X) and named the other Linux (and gave it the letter L).

I booted into the XP CD, and it could see both hard-drives, but couldn't access them. I found out that this was because of Sata drivers (I was in AHCI mode). I tried slipstreaming the sata drivers into the XP CD but it still didn't work.

In the end I switched to IDE mode in my BIOS. By mistake I booted into Windows 7 and it installed IDE drivers, but that didn't seem to do any harm, as it still worked in AHCI mode.

In IDE mode the Windows XP CD could access the hard-drives, but couldn't see the partitions I had made. To be on the save size I unplugged hard-drive 1. I then let XP format all of the hard-drive 2, and I made a new 100gb partition (using the XP CD). After that I installed XP.

The only odd thing that happened when it was installing was that after copying the Windows files to the computer, it rebooted and copied them again. This meant that: 1) When I booted into Windows XP it showed a dual-boot menu with two Windows XP's on it. I always clicked on the top one, and XP would turn on. and 2) in the XP C: folder there was a folder called Windows and a folder called Windows0.

I started to install drivers for XP (from my USB flash drive) but couldn't install the Sata drivers (because they needed Microsoft Net Framework 3, which wouldn't install), and couldn't install the graphics card driver because I couldn't find the driver disc (which I found today) and the software from the manufacturers website for downloading the driver didn't want to open on XP.

Next I wanted to boot back into Windows 7 (I can’t remember why). So I went back into AHCI mode, plugged hard-drive 1 back in and booted on.
Next I installed Linux Mint (on hard-drive 2), and that all went well.

I rebooted after the install and GRUB came up with Window 7, XP and Linux.
I wanted to edit GRUB’s config file to make Windows 7 the default OS and to get it to skip the bootloader unless I held down the SHIFT key.
Well, I made two mistakes. For a start I forgot that GRUB counts the first OS as 0 (not 1), so I made XP the default instead of Windows 7. And secondly I should have got GRUB to wait a second before loading the default OS, as it never opened when I held down (or repeatedly pressed) the SHIFT key. I was still in AHCI so it tried to boot Windows XP, but couldn’t and I got a BSOD.
GRUB was on hard-drive 1 and the Windows XP bootloader was on hard-drive 2, so both hard-drives would only boot into XP (and couldn’t load that because I was in AHCI mode).
To get back to Windows 7 I booted into the Windows 7 DVD, opened Commanded Prompt and ran the following commands:
bootrec /FixMbr this said it had completed successfully
bootrec /FixBoot this also said it had completed successfully
bootrec /RebulidBcd this had some sort of error (I think it said something about the device not being found or something), but I tried rebooting and Windows 7 booted on, so I didn’t worry about it.

I tried many times and many ways to repair or replace GRUB. One of the ways I tried was to delete the Linux partition and reinstall it. This time it didn’t find Windows 7 or XP when it was installing which I thought was odd.

In the end I installed EasyBcd on Windows 7, and added Linux and XP to the Windows 7 bootloader. Booting into Windows 7 worked nicely, but if I tried to boot into Linux I got a GRUB recovery screen, and if I tried to boot into XP (in IDE mode) it came up with some message about missing an OEM file (I think), and not being able to turn on.

So…Using EasyBCD I deleted Windows XP and Linux from Windows 7s bootloader, and a day or two later used KILLDISK to wipe hard-drive 2.

I then read up about Windows XP not seeing partitions when installing, and read that I should use Gparted Live to make an active partition with a boot flag on it. I did this on hard-drive 2.

Part two:
Yesterday I was (on Windows 7) getting ready to try installing XP again, and was looking at the drivers. By mistake I opened a Microsoft Net Framework 3 (or it might have been 2) installer that was included with one of the Sata drivers. It extracted (twice!) all the install files. I wasn’t sure where they were extracted to, but later I think I saw them in the Windows folder, but didn’t delete them.

Today I tried installing Windows XP again (again in IDE mode) and this time it saw the 100gb partition I made on hard-drive 2 for it (see ‘Part one’ for more info). I clicked enter for it to install on that partition, but it came up with a message saying it would have format the Windows 7 C: drive to continue, so I cancelled the install. Then I unplugged hard-drive 1, booted back into the XP CD and tried again. This time it seemed to install fine.

I turned XP one, and installed my graphics card driver from the CD that came with it. After installing it asked me if I wanted to reboot now, and I said no, as I was going to install the other drivers first. The other drivers were on my USB flash drive. I plugged it in and the computer saw it but said it was empty and asked me if I wanted to format it. I decided to boot back into Windows 7 and see if I could view the files there.

I booted into the BIOS and changed the boot order to boot into hard-drive 1 (Windows 7), and then remembered I was still in IDE mode, so I booted back into the BIOS and when back into AHCI mode.

I rebooted the computer, but all that happened was a black screen with a blinking underscore. The Windows 7 logo didn't come up at all.
I found this picture online of what it looks like: http://oi50.tinypic.com/wk5rwm.jpg

Part three:
My first idea was to repair the bootloader with the Windows 7 DVD. I booted into it, opened the commanded prompt and tried the following (which didn’t fix it):
bootrec /FixMbr this said it had completed successfully.
bootrec /FixBoot this said ‘Element not found’.
bootrec /RebulidBcd this said it had completed successfully, but also said that it found 0 windows installations.

That made me panic a bit! I tried the ‘Startup repair’ option on the Windows 7 DVD, and left it for about an hour but it was still going, so I stopped it to try other things.

I then booted into my Gparted Live CD and a pop-up came up with “Libparted Bug Found! Invalid partition table - Recursive partition /dev/sda”. Gparted then sees hard-drive 1 all as unallocated space, but sees hard-drive 2 normally.

I clicked the “Attempt Data Recovery” button on Gparted, but it doesn’t go pass the pop-up where you have to click OK.

I used Gparted to remove the boot flag from the Windows XP partition as I read somewhere that sometimes having more than one boot flag can stop Windows from working properly, but that didn’t do anything.

When I try to boot into hard-drive 2 (XP) it says “Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key”, but that might be because I removed the boot flag.

I made a bootable USB of the Knoppix CD, as I had read online it was good for file recovery. It opens up fine, but there isn't a hard-drive folder on the desktop.
I booted into my Linux Mint live DVD. Hard-drive 1 is listed in Computer, but if I try to open it, it says ‘Cannot mount drive’.

I ran a ‘Quick search’ on TestDisk and picked Intel (is that right?), and got the following:

Code:

 
Partition           Start             End        Size in sectors
[b]* HPFS - NTFS              0  32 33    12 223 19     204800 [System Reserved]
P HPFS - NTFS             12 223 20 267349  89  4 4294760448[/b]

I ran chkdsk c: /r and it said:

Code:

The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.

I ran fdisk -l, and it's showing my hard-drive as FAT16, when it should be NTFS.

Here's what fdisk told me:

Code:

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders, total 5860533168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 0 1565565871 782782936 4 FAT16 <32M

Disk /dev/sda1: 801.6 GB, 801569726464 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 97451 cylinders, total 1565565872 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1p1 * 0 1565565871 782782936 4 FAT16 <32M

Summary:
- I had a working computer with Windows 7 (Ultimate 64-bit) installed
- I tried to do a dual-boot of Windows 7 (Ultimate 64-bit) and XP (Professional 32-bit), but something went wrong.
- Now when I try to boot into Windows 7 all I get is a black screen with a blinking underscore.

I've given up on the dual-boot idea. I just want a working PC with my files back now!

I'm really desperate to save my files, even if I have to reinstall Windows 7 afterwards. What's the best thing for me to do?

I'm wondering if I should use TestDisk to write me a new partition table, but it's a bit odd that it didn't see the first partition as a OS.

I'm sorry again that this is so long. I didn't know what was important to include, and what wasn't.

Thank you.

 

I can't see that you have any realistic way forward other than a reinstall of 7 to disk 1 and using partition and data recovery tools on disk 2 in the hope of salvaging at least some of your data. How successful that might be is in the lap of the gods but as you have only created two 100 GB partitions on your 3GB disk 2 that leaves at least 2.8 GB which hasn't been overwritten, so there may be some chance.

Two tools I would use in this situation are both from Minitool - Partition Recovery (free) and, if your original partition cannot be recovered, Power Data Recovery. The latter is only free for recovering 1GB of data but, if that proves successful, you might choose to go on to the paid version.

I assume you have learnt your lesson about backing up both system and data.

EDIT - I can't see either program on MG so try HERE

 

I meant TB, not GB, sorry :-o

 

I would have done this, but most of my important files were on hard-drive 1.

So, after making a back-up of everything I could I took my computer to my local computer shop.

He repaired the partition table using TestDisk, and then tried to repair the MBR and the boot-loader with the Windows 7 DVD. That didn't work because (for some reason) the Windows 7 DVD was seeing the C drive as a D drive.

He changed it back to C, repaired the MBR and everything worked! My pinned tabs were even still there!

It costed me £20, but I'm so happy he was able to fix it.

I have learnt my lesson and have bought two external hard drives to do full back-ups a lot more often, and I also plan to back-up my most important stuff online.

Thank you.

P.S. I love this site!

 

Good to hear of a repair outfit that knows its stuff! Usually the small repairers do, but you can't often say the same of the high street stores unfortunately. £20 well spent compared with what I thought you would be into!

 

Yes, definitely money well spent. I don't usually trust computer shops, but it was a small one, and two friends of mine have had luck with repairs there before, so I took a chance, and I'm very happy I did!