Bootloader nightmare

So I'm having some trouble with the windows 7 bootloader.

I have a dual boot system with Gentoo Linux as the other operating system. I have Linux installed on partition 1, swap on partition 2, Windows on partition 3, and a storage drive as partition 4. Partition 4 was NTFS format, but I formatted and encrypted it.

Turns out unbeknownst to me that the Windows 7 bootloader was installed on partition 4 and now I cannot boot windows. Windows was apparently installed on a logical extended partition for some reason, thus it had to use a different drive to install the bootloader on.

I tried using my Windows 7 recovery disk and the automated startup repair didn't even detect the Windows partition at first, but running bootrec /scanos from command line did detect it.

I used Partition Wizard to convert the Windows partition to a primary partition and marked it as the only bootable partition in the whole system.

After that I was able to run the automated repair wizard a couple times. I also ran bootrec /fixboot Everything seemed like it should work, but when I try to boot Windows I get a blinking cursor and after a great while it will timeout and report "Disk Read Error."

The startup recovery tool reports there is nothing else it can do, but now bootrec /scanos does not report any operating systems.

I am able to view and manipulate the files both under the Linux environment and the Windows Recovery environment so I know the file system has not been damaged.

I'm at a loss for as to what I need to do next. I'd rather not have to re-install Windows if at all possible. I consider that to be a last resort option because there are some RSA keys that I'd rather not lose. I'm looking for a little guidance because I do not know enough about the windows bootloader to know what to do now.

severedsolo said:

Hi arwing welcome to the forums :)

Can I ask, how did you encrypt the drive, was it using Bitlocker?

truecrypt.

It was also erased so there is no way to recover the bootloader from it. It's simply gone.

Edit: I have the keyfile for that partition so I'll be able to recover it regardless it's some other things I do not have the keys for.