System partiton was not found

LAROSE · 12 Apr 2013

I've not used many forums so bear with me please. I am also doing all this typing via my phone so sry for misspelled words.

Ok here goes. Three days ago I shut down my comp like normal. When I got home after. work and booted my system up all i got was a grey screen. I checked the monitor and graphics card, and they both checked out. So i created an ISO DVD. I ran the startup repair which told me "MBR is corrupted" and found the tutorial here that uses bootsect.exe. When i went looking for which drive was the dvd (which is G btw), I found a D drive NTFS partition backup of 86 mb but NO C DRIVE. I ran the bootsect.exe anyway but ended up with "system partition not found".

Please advise. I'm now stuck and not sure where to go from now.

VistaKing · 12 Apr 2013

To enter System Recovery Options by using Windows installation disc:
Insert the installation disc.
Restart your computer.
If prompted, press any key to start Windows from the installation disc. If your computer is not configured to start from a CD or DVD, check your BIOS settings.
Click Repair your computer.
Select US as the keyboard language settings, and then click Next.
Select the operating system you want to repair, and then click Next.
Select your user account and click Next.

On the System Recovery Options menu you will get the following options:
Startup Repair

System Restore

Windows Complete PC Restore

Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool

Command Prompt

Select Command Prompt

Type

Code:

bcdedit | find "osdevice"

Note

the | pipe symbol is the key above Enter . Hold shift down and press the key with \ on it

Press the enter key after you inputted the command . It will tell you the drive letter of Windows . It might say its os device partition=D:

Let me know what the results are

You could also try this in command prompt . Press [ENTER] after each line

Code:

Diskpart
List volume

Let me know what you get after that .

LAROSE · 12 Apr 2013

Ty VistaKing .. I had done all that before as part of the tutorial ... Here are the results in more detail...
from diskpart list volume:
#: LTR - LABEL - FS - TYPE - SIZE - STATUS - INFO
0: G - GSP1RMCHPXF - UDF - DVD-ROM 3167 MB - HEALTHY - (no info)
1 - D - Backup A1 - NTFS - Partition - 86 MB - HEALTHY. - (no info)
2 - 6: H-L - (no label) - (no Fs) - Removable - 0B - No Media - (no info)

As i said before, no c drive and the dvd is G drive. St.ill running osdevice

VistaKing · 12 Apr 2013

Once you find out which drive has Windows 7 installed do this

Code:

 cd c:\windows\system32

Press [ENTER]

Type

Code:

 bcdboot c:\windows /s c:

Press [ENTER]

type

Code:

shutdown -r -t 0

Press [Enter]

LAROSE · 12 Apr 2013

I'm sry Vistaking, but as I've said many times now ... THESE TOOLS CANNOT FIND THE C DRIVE WHICH IS THE OS DEVICE. i also ran ur other suggestion with the pipe device and no result. None of the tools can find any files. For example, in cmd prompt i did c: <enter> followed by dir <enter> and the system had identifying info for the c drive but no files were found. So i cannot do what u asked.

OOC ... does Windows 7 use anything like a FAT file? Like used in old NT and 2K systems? If it does, is that NTFS or the MBR? Or something else?

LAROSE · 12 Apr 2013

Also. just tried chkdsk on c drive and got "Cannot open volume for direct access."

VistaKing · 12 Apr 2013

Windows 7 uses NTFS by default . Fat file system is too old for Windows 7 . But it does use a Fat32 file system if you have a UEFI bios

LAROSE · 12 Apr 2013

I don't have a uefi bios.

VistaKing · 12 Apr 2013

When you did Dir C: did it locate a windows folder ?

LAROSE · 12 Apr 2013

No files what so ever.