Windows 7 not booting (Disk read error)

Recently, I was messing around with my HDD's partitions in GParted. I resized my Windows 7 partition and made a new NTFS for Windows XP, and a new ext2 for Puppy Linux. I installed the GRUB Bootloader and all my partitions booted fine off of it except for Windows 7. I later found out this has something to do with the Master Boot Record and that I should install GRUB and then install Windows 7. I was okay with this for a while, but Windows XP couldnt boot many applications from the Windows 7 partition because I have it's x64. I eventually realized that I hadn't made my Windows XP partition large enough (only 3 gig) for anything I wanted to do with it. After a few days, I just deleted the Windows XP and Puppy Linux partitions and was back to having just my Windows 7 partition. I was hoping everything would be magically better, but when I restarted my computer, the BIOS told me a "disk read error" had occurred and "press any key to restart".

I put in a Puppy Linux Live CD and opened up GParted again. GParted showed me that my HDD was now just one big block of Unallocated space. Then I looked in the lower-left corner of the screen and saw that I still had 4 partitions (sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4). sda1 is now my Windows 7 partition, sda2 is now my Windows XP partition, and for some reason sda3 and sda4 are both HP Recovery partitions.

I tried everything I could think of to save myself. I popped in the Windows 7 Upgrade Disk (I had been running Vista before) and tried the Recovery tools included with it, but the Recovery didn't recognize any partitions on my HDD at all. I ran a Command Prompt and tried all the options in bootrec fixmbr, but two of them didnt work and the other two replied "Element not found". Then I tried sfc /scannow, but that told me I had to be running Windows. I booted back into Puppy, ran GParted, and tried to make a new partition, but GParted told me that doing so would erase ALL data on the HDD. There's probably some more options I tried, but I can't remember them right now.

Can anyone help me out? I feel like I'm close to just backing up my personal files, wiping the HDD, and starting over. Only problem is I don't have anywhere to backup 150 gigs :\

Help!
Splunkin

Hi

Tews is right, start all over.

Well guys I kinda fixed it. I used fdisk to delete sda4 and after that GParted started detecting my partitions. Now I'm back to 627 megabytes of unallocated space at the beginning, then my Windows 7 partition, then another 3.0 gigabytes of unallocated space, and finally my 13 gigabytes of the Windows 7 Recovery partition.

I feel like I'm making progress, but the System Recovery disk still isn't detecting Windows 7 as an operating system on my computer. I figure that if I can resolve this, then I can fix the rest of it.

Help,
Splunkin.

Boot from the Win7 DVD Repair console and click through to Recov tools to try to run Startup Repair.

In Win7 Startup repair has automated all fomer bootrec and bootsect commands, however if an installation cannot be found sometimes Startup Repair will not agree to run.

If it will run, you need to run it repeatedly as it does its tests and then applies fixes on the assumption that they will work, until you come back to try again the next fix, until ultimately it will rewrite the MBR.

If Startup Repair will not run, then you need to try to make the installation detectable by the installer to do its systematic tests and fixes via Startup Repair. Several times I have gotten it to do this by manually running the bootrec or bootsect commands.

Boot into the WIn7 DVD repair console (or Repair CD), click through to Recovery Tools and open a command line to type:

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

Now restart and see if OS will start. If not, see if Startup Repair will now begin sequencing - run until it finds nothing else to fix or starts Win7.

If this fails, one last attempt to get the installer to see and Repair Win7. Open a DVD repair Command Prompt and type:

Bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force

Now again restart, boot back into DVD and run Startup Repair repeatedly to see if Win7 will start up.

Thanks, gregrocker. I'm posting this from Windows 7 right now . The only thing that's weird is that at startup it asks me if I want to boot into Windows 7 or Windows 7 Home Premium (Recovered). This isn't a big deal; I just pick Windows 7 and it works fine.

Thanks again,
Splunkin

Am I correct that you now only have the WIn7 partition, and in Disk Management it is marked System Active Boot?

If not, please post back a screenshot of your full Disk Management map using the Snipping Tool in Start Menu, attaching file using paper clip in reply box, before proceeding.

Otherwise look for the ghost Boot listing in msconfig Boot tab, highlight and delete.

If it persists, install EasyBCD to see if ghost listing is shown. If so, remove it on Add/Remove tab.

Okay, everything is completely normal now. Thanks again, gregrocker.