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#11
Did you try setting H hard drive as the first HD in bios boot order - mark the 7 partition Active - run startup repair 4 or 5 times.
I don't want to send this off in the wrong direction or give bad info.
But I can tell you what I would try personally in this situation.
If the MBR is toast, then you may have no other choice than to nuke and reload
I do not know if these will work or be compatible with Win7 in anyway shape or form, or if OS version even matters...This could make things better or worse.. So, use at your own risk...
You can however try MBRFix and/or MBRWiz
You can also possibly try TestDisk, which is a data recovery program.
And has save my butt a few times.
I do believe both are a part of the UBCD4Win (however you would also need to upgrade some tools plugins as they may be out dated), which you may find very handy in this or many other situations. Every Tech should be aware of it and BartPE (which UBCD4Win is a derivative of).
With all that said.....
You can try DiskPart also....to assign the drive letter you want.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l...8WS.10%29.aspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415
I would start with building a UBCD4Win (or BartPE) and boot to it, see if the drive shows up in Drive manager.
If it does, I might try changing the drive letter there, then set as active.
Then if needed run some of the 7 boot option fixes to see if this will repair any BCD problems.
I say might, because I have never had to do this, this would just be a way I would go if all else was failing.
If the drive is not showing up at all in there, then the MBR is toast and you can try the MBRFix or MBRWiz to try and repair it if possible. If these fail, then you can try TestDisk, this may work, but is not likely, however, it may allow you to recover data id it finds it.
If all this fails, with all else you have tried, Personally, I would give up the ghost and nuke and reload.
Once the MBR is toast, there is almost no way to fix it.
Although, someone may know something I don't.
I was working on an Acer Iconia Tab W500 (tablet PC) this evening, which runs Windows 7 Enterprise (Ultimate) and Ubuntu 12.04. My intentions were to remove Ubuntu, restore the Windows 7 boot loader, and then remove the Ext3 partition containing Ubuntu 12.04.
I use a Sandisk 4GB USB drive as my installation media.
The tablet uses a built in 32GB SSD, and a separate 32GB SDXC card (45MBps).
I found that booting from the actual installation media would not repair the drive. I'm not sure exactly what caused it's confusion, but since Bootrec.exe does not allow you to target the operation to be performed on a specific drive, it's sorta a shot in the dark.
So, I copied the tool to my local drive, and booted up, first triggering my Drive selector, then immediately hitting F8 to trigger the boot-selector menu. This was all while grub was still installed. I was able to locally select the repair mode, and then open a command prompt, and run bootrec against the local drives without using a boot disc. This successfully removed grub, and I can now proceed to removing the ext3 partition and then spanning out the NTFS partition to reclaim the space on that drive, which is tiny to begin with.
If I *do* put another alternative OS on this machine, it'll be Android x86 v4.x or newer. I'll continue to use Windows 7 as it's primary OS until I can update it to Windows 8 Enterprise, and for now I'll continue to use USB drives for running Linux Distributions, which works well anyway. I just need to get a few lower-profile-drives since this *is* a tablet afterall. But I'll give it this, Windows 7 runs like a scalded dog on this Tablet, and Diablo 3 looks pretty sweet on it too! :)
Share and Enjoy,
StygianAgenda
Last edited by Brink; 13 Aug 2014 at 08:56. Reason: removed link
I am just reading so many different questions and answers. thanks to all.
Hello,
One of my computers does not want to start or restart but only SOMETIMES.
Do you think that FixMbr or FixBoot could help ?
Or because this computer often starts without problem it should not be of any help ?
Thank you.
no. its not likely.
Download a copy of CCleaner, install it, configure it, then run its drive cleanup and registry cleanup tools. It'll likely cure the issues you've dealt with. If it doesn't, then its likely that your system needs to be reloaded, with fresh drivers for everything on it.
If you can do that yourself, you'll save a lot of money vs taking it to a shop.
(also, I've long since done away with Windows on my tablet. I'm now running Ubuntu-Mate 14.04-LTS, which I use mostly for work)
Last edited by StygianAgenda; 06 Aug 2015 at 10:17. Reason: update
If getting the "Total identified Windows installations: 0" when running bootrec /scanos, eg:
You'll need to clean the MBR then create a new MBR and tell Windows to use it. To do this, simply run these two commands:X:\windows\system32>bootsect.exe /scanos
Scanning all disks for Windows installations.
Please wait, since this may take a while...
Successfully scanned Windows installations.
Total identified Windows installations: 0
The operation completed successfully
bootrec /fixmbr
bootsect.exe /nt60 all /force
You should see a message that says your "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted Volumes"
This helped me when i had to delete my linux partition and the separate MBR partition due to not enough space on windows. After extending the windows partition to the newly formatted NTFS partitions I obviously did not have an MBR anymore. The "fix problems preventing windows from starting" did not work and none of the commands in this forum worked. I used a bootcd to get into command prompt and ran this & it fixed it right away. Hope this helps you if you're having the same problem