Windows 7: Help restoring windows 7(Samsung Recovery Issue)

Hi,

I have had my Samsung R530 laptop a few years now and I have been a little careless with it and now need to restore my laptop to its original out of the box setup.

Samsung recovery has never worked since the day I installed Ubuntu, and I have had regular fights between Linux grub and windows mbr for control of the boot....lol

The bottom line is I start samsung recovery and it says recovery area not found, I know its there; 15GB/Healthy Partition/3.14GB free the partition label is correct 0x27 and the windows 7 files seem to be there too, problem is how can I access and restore windows 7 with this partition if cannot access it with samsung's recovery tool???

Thanks in Advance

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

If you have your Windows 7 DVD or a Windows repair disc you could boot into the Recovery Environment and try the Restore Image option.

Failing that, you could contact Samsung and see if they still have a recovery disc for your computer.

I'm no Linux expert as I've never used it, but I'll lay odds it's probably the reason you can't access Samsung's recovery partition. I take it you didn't create a set of recovery discs when you first bought the computer?

No I'm afraid I didn't, I don't have a disc from the manufacturer of the retailer.

Recent Samsung laptops allow burning Recovery DVD's or saving to external which requires a small intact Recovery partition to boot. It seems you have a larger one which if you're sure is Recovery (does it say so?) then it may actually hold the full Recovery image. If it's lost its ability to boot it might be due to GRUB corruption of the boot loader.

Try marking the Recovery partition Active, rebooting to use the hotkey to try to trigger it now: Partition - Mark as Active (Method Two).
Take note of the currently-marked Active partition so you can change it back if needed, possibly with a few Startup Repairs

There is another method in which EasyBCD is used to create a boot listing linked to the file which runs Recovery within the partition, after unhiding its files in Control Panel>Folder Options>View. But I'll need to search the exact file and Easy settings.

Have you also considered getting the superior Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7?
Everything you need is in the link. I'd save the Recovery Partition because sometimes on Samsungs there is needed software that won't run correctly (e.g. cam and touchpad advanced features if you need them) even if reinstalled from the model's Support Downloads webpage.