Windows 7: MBR damaged, partition unknown

Hi all,


It happened all at once, I restarted my asus K52E with windows 7 x64 and a black page with a blinking underscore was shown, indicating a damaged mbr.

The recovery partition is not accessible. I tried all the Windows 7 mbr recovery (with the command prompt of the Windows 7 installation disk) but didn't work
Moreover, I'm afraid of my data partition, because this one is the only not readable by the ubuntu live cd. I post here my HD partitions:
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I explain:
dev/sda1 is the asus recovery partition (cannot access it)
dev/sda2 (C:\), is the ntfs Windows 7 installation partition
dev/sda5, is the ntfs data partition (I WANT TO RECOVER)



please, how can I access the sda5 partition or boot my pc without hurting the files in the data partition ?
Do you know any bootable SW?

thank you,

Fred

Follow these steps for Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot - Windows 7 Forums

Did you have GRUB bootloader on the HD? This can corrupt Windows 7 beyond repair.

No GRUB was installed.

Thanks, I'll try all the steps and I'll report the results...

I would try the bootable CD of Partition Wizard (last entry on the webpage) to inspect what is wrong with that partition. With the same CD you can also try to fix the MBR.

MiniTool Partition Recovery (Freeware) has helped me to recover lost partion - extended and logical. Quick and easy.

If you can still see partitions than MBR is readable and correct at least in the part where partition information is stored.

I GOT IT!

I followed the Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Boot :
- no malware was found
- mbr seemed to be intact
...but the Bootrec.exe with the /RebuildBcd command couldn't find any disk

Finally, the Partition Wizard recovery CD helped me to set the partition ACTIVE (it wasn't) and rebuild the mbr.

However, I struggled to find a way to use the tool without burning a CD (the famous "Bootable Flash Drive" well publicized, is not free!).
So, if you ever need it, I strongly advise you to use the UNetbootin tool for windows and mount it on a usb key. It's faster and easier!

Thank you

Thanks for reporting back, Fred, and glad it helped.

This UNetbootin tool looks interesting for writing PW CD ISO to flash stick. Did you choose Linux from dropdown? Any other specific steps you took?

I found this: Steps to create a bootable USB drive partition manager .

Actually, there's no need of a tutorial: it's quite easy to put the iso on the flash/usb and get a bootable usb drive using the windows version of UNetbootin.

It looks like any Linux bootable flash writer can work to write PW CD ISO to flash then since others have reported that Universal USB Installer also works, although I've not yet found out what they choose from it's dropdown. Perhaps nothing.

actually, there's no dropdown.
Unebootin supports two options:
1. burn a linux distro
2. burn any general ISO

If you select the 2nd option, there's no dropdown, just the input filetype and the destination (removable or floppy)