Windows 7: I aligned my partitions and botched Windows Recovery!

Long story short: I aligned the partitions on my SSD using GParted Live. I tried to boot into Windows and got this error:

It told me to basically do a startup repair from my Windows 7 DVD. I did so and it fixed it! The startup repair said something about a partition not being found and it was going to edit some Registry entries. It also said it made this backup file, BCD.Backup.0001 in C:/Boot. Found it, it's there. But, it fixed it.



So, I got into Windows and good stuff: decent performance increase. BUT something has happened to that little Windows Recovery Environment that's built into Windows. Like hit F8 and see that first option, "Repair Your Computer". That one. Every time I try to boot to THAT (not Windows!) it spits the old error, the one you see above.

How can I do a startup repair on Windows Recovery Environment, lol?

Current ideas:

sfc /scannow
some partition table editor or something

Any more?

~Ibrahim~

Welcome!

Try running Startup Repair again; that may or may not work.

If it doesn't work, open up the command prompt (also on the repair disc) and type bootrec /rebuildbcd.

Hope this helps,
~JK

I tried Startup Repair again and this time it spit that error again, but this time booting into Windows. I hit "Continue" (which last time just sent it into a restart/error/restart/error loop) but this time it just booted into Windows....weird.

Tried "bootrec /rebuildbcd". It did its stuff (yet noted Total Windows Installations Found = 0) and said it completed successfully. Yet, still can't boot into the Recovery Environment: same error as noted above.

Thanks, though, highly appreciated! +1

Shall I try sfc /scannow? Or does that only affect Windows' files and not boot files?

Try opening a command prompt again and entering the commands

bootrec /fixmbr
and
bootrec /fixboot

Also make sure the partition is set to active. See my post here for instructions.

After you do, run Startup Repair again.

The drive, according to Disk Management, is "Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary)". However, I still ran the steps with DiskPart outlined in your guide, which is very helpful.

I ran bootrec /fixmbr and bootrec /fixboot and then Startup Repair (all from Windows 7 DVD). However, none seemed to fix it. I still can't get into "Repair Your Computer": same error.

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated!

EDIT: Wanted to create a restore point before installing a program and this is what I saw:



Freaky. Yeah. I tried turning it on for "System" but gave some error about an incorrect label. I went to My Computer and renamed the drive from "Windows 7 x64" to just "Windows 7". That turned System Protection on for both drives. I may remove "Windows 7 x64" from that screen.....don't need any of those old backups anyways, as I made an image last night. Thought this might help? I will rerun bootrec /rebuildbdc /fixmbr /fixboot and Startup Repair.

Hang tight, I am out of ideas. I will post a notice for the other Gurus, and contact one of our experts on boot issues.

Can you post a snip of your Disk Mangement window? The Windows 7 Recovery is a 100MB partition at the formt of the hard drive. To boot from this partition and use the recovery tools this partition must be marked active. If you mark the Windows 7 partition active an do the "Startup Repair", you are bypassing the Recovery partition altogether.

Cheers!
Robert

Reran bootrec /rebuildbcd /fixmbr /fixboot and Startup Repair again: still persistently there.

Is it hidden or something? I don't have this 100MB partition there at all.



This is how I aligned the drives: Guide: How to align boot partitions without losing data

Basically: moved Windows to the right 10MB, created the correct offset in that 10MB, removed that 9.xxMB that was left. I only saw one partition in GParted (pre-alignment) and in Disk Management. Have I always just missed this?

No, it is not hidden, it is not there.



You can get along with out it. It is not a requirement. You can also put it back:

http://www.sevenforums.com/installat...ndows-7-a.html


To fix your restore point issue, I would suggest reconfigure restore point. Erase / disable it ... enable it and create a new restore point. It should be ok as long as you do not change the hard drive partition table again.

Cheers!
Robert

Awesome. I will try this and see how it works!

OK, I did that with System Restore and it looks much cleaner now and more like it used to:



Will report back soon.

I'm just going to use GParted since I've already got that on a DVD.