Windows 7: All of my Partitions disappeared and I cannot make them active.

Hello all, I am new to these forums so please forgive me if I put this post in the wrong area or something of that nature.

I'm running a 2 month old Toshiba Satellite PC, when suddenly all of my Partitions, except for my C: drive disappeared. My computer also failed to recognize my CD/DVD Rom drive, however, after searching around I was able to find a lot of people with the same problem and recovered that Partition and the use of the drive by deleting the upperfilters in my registry. But the other Partitions are still gone and marked as inactive in my Disk Management. This is what I am looking at:



As you can see, it shows an additional two partitions, but they cannot be made active by right clicking them. When I right click them, all options are "greyed out" making it impossible to preform and actions.

I tried using a couple partition recovery softwares, but to no avail, because I am not trying to recover lost partitions, I am trying to activate partitions that are already existing. I have norton 360 installed and ran several anti-virus programs that came up cold. However, I did find one gentlemen on youtube, that had the same problem and fixed it by restoring the computers factory default settings. This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0qENIBLo5s That's almost identical to my problem, and like the gentlemen in the video states, there does not seem to be a lot of info available to this particular situation, unless I missed it.



This course of action seems a little drastic to me, and a bit risky, so before doing this, I wanted to get the opinion of this forum, and see if some of you individuals more knowledgeable than myself can help. Keep in mind, I'm ignorant to a lot of this stuff, so please explain gently.

Thank you in advance, Brandon.

As this may be caused by an infection, install, update and run a full scan with Malwarebytes, in Safe Mode if necessary.

Next run Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard - Video Help to try to recover the missing partition.

The only partition which should be marked Active is the one intended to boot Windows 7, which for your model is likely the Recovery partition. However it is missing it's System flag which signifies where the System boot files reside, so I would boot the Windows 7 DVD or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair - Run up to 3 Separate Times to correct any problems with the boot files and config.

If you decide to start over you can try running Toshiba HDD Recovery Utility or get the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 without the corrupting preinstalled bloatware.

malwarebytes, partition wizard, and the two recovery utility software you mentioned, are they costly programs? I do not mind restoring the factory setting like that man in the video mentioned, but im afraid that could go wrong, and since im already paying for norton 360 which was $100, and the new computer on top of that, im trying to keep the budget down with christmas coming up.

Those apps are free and Greg has posted links in his message to them.

Yes I'm sorry I had my links disabled, I will try step by step what you suggested, I appreciate the advice.

If you can't get your money back from Norton, when it expires I'd replace it with free Microsoft Security Essentials.

We show you how to get and keep a perfect Windows 7 install using freeware.

Let us know how it goes.

Will do Greg, I just ran Malwarebytes and it found one infection, I removed it and rebooted. I then ran the scan again and it came up clean. I figured norton was not the best, but it came well recommended and friends had total me positive things, so whats done is done, i cannot fathom that it will hurt my system, right? But yes, I will not be renewing it.

I'm now about to run Partition Recovery Wizard, but I'm going to look for a tutorial first, because I'm not sure what exactly I'm doing with it. I ran EaseUs before, and I got to tell you, it messed with my computer, deleted files, moved things around, forced me to install spam tool bars, all of this without prompt or any command from myself, and was just generally a bad experience. I guess it's possible I used it wrong, but I was careful and read everything, and EaseUs came recommended from a lot of people on CNet, so I want to be careful. Thanks for input, I really appreciate it, my anxiety is through the roof. I will let you know how it works.

I gave you a video showing how to run Recovery Wizard: Partition Wizard Partition Recovery Wizard Video Help.

Do a Quick Scan to see if it finds the partition, then if so select it to restore.

Yes I watched the video, but I'm a little slow when it comes to these things and I always feel better when I see someone explaining it step by step, so I found a youtube video were someone is using it. I can speak in front of crowd in a board room and explain ideas to are large group of people, but when it comes to operating a simple piece of software, a monkey could do a better job.

I'm running the scan now, I get a much better feeling for this software, it seems to be running good, the only thing is that I elected to run a full scan, I figured it could not hurt. I also took your suggestion and created a repair disk, in case this fails.

I will let you know the results, your attention to my situation is very appreciated, and thank you for putting up with my short comings.

Got it, will do, the scan is about 60% finished, your right, quick scan would have been better. I will post as soon as it's done.