DISCLAIMER - Hello there, it has been an eventful day for my main desktop rig and I. Before I get started I will be explaining everything I have done with the PC today and in the recent few days, so this will contain information on my Windows 10 install, however I am having trouble with Windows 7 Home Premium. (This whole post will be beneficial to your suggestions as I will be explaining absolutely everything I have done up until this point that I think may be related - whether it actually end up being important or not, so please bare with me .)
About a week ago, I decided to partition my 1TB hard drive to install a nice clean Windows 7 Home Premium (I gave this 10GB originally) OS along side my current and main Windows 10 Home installation for nothing other than my personal enjoyment, I like Windows 7. I am no stranger to this and it went perfectly with no issues, both worked perfectly with the system and the boot loader worked nothing other than normally. Skip forward to this morning.
I get up and switch on my computer, like every teen on a Saturday morning and I use my Windows 10 OS, again everything is perfectly normal at this point. I decide that I needed to mark my Windows 7 partition as active when really I didn't need to touch it and it was working fine before. I had then decided that I wanted to add another 10 GB to the partitioned sector of the hard drive because I had come to find that after installation, I didn't have sufficient space to move my virtual machines on there like I had intended to, for again nothing but my own personal use. (To be quite frank I was sick of them just sitting on my main install doing nothing but collecting dust, this is one of the reasons I did a dual boot, however I never got round to doing my VM installs on Windows 7 because of the monstrosity a certain freeware caused.) Because of this decision I shrunk my hard drive volume by 10GB, in preparation to extend my Windows 7 volume with it. I have always done it this way but today Disk Manager gave me the middle finger so I was forced to go online and search for other options I had.
I came across a freeware called AOMEI Partition Assistant, it had 4 stars on cnet so you can't go wrong, right? Well that's what I thought too. I'm not blaming my faults on the software but I don't think by any means it helped either. I downloaded it and got to work, I used the "merge volume" tool to add the 10GB of unallocated space I had to my Windows 7 sector - A forum I read recommended this software for "extending boot partitions without formatting", so I did. After it was finished - I did a quick restart and boom, I get boot errors thrown at me from the exact second I touch the power button, I thought it was toast.
"An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that do not contain operating systems and try again. Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart.
I was honestly baffled - but also not surprised, I had no option to see a boot loader so I got this error straight after BIOS. I was powerless. So I got my Windows 10 Home install disc out and attempted to repair my PC. After about an hour of fumbling around I finally managed to restore to boot loader menu on start up so I could choose what OS to boot into. Awesome. My Windows 10 installation was back and was working as good as ever, no files or programs were lost during this destruction
THANK LORD!
Now sorry for the waffle but like I explained above, to avoid constant back and fourths on this thread I decided to give you a full detail post.
Now for my actual problem. Windows 7 is having none of it since the monstrosity I caused above (My Windows 10 however is like I said, back to normal and no corruptions.) I can choose it in the boot loader menu and everything looks normal until I reach the desktop. (I will attach a .zip file of all my pictures and videos demonstrating this so you can get a better idea.) This desktop has nothing, I can force start explorer.exe but that's it, once I get there I have access to nothing, not even My Computer. *I recommend you look at those images now*
I have a feeling it has something to do with a corrupt partition or registry, but I don't know so that's why I'm reaching out for help. If I have to reinstall I'll probably just get rid of the partition all together, considering it's already cause me enough trouble, however if I can I would like to at least try to save it first.
I have made all the needed back ups for Windows 10 now as I realized after a risky slip up like that I should probably update my system image. Windows 10 is perfect, Windows 7 is my issue as explained above, please help! :O
-FINAL NOTE-
On the video you will see that I skipped chkdsk, I would usually let this run but it claims to have no bad sectors every time - I have let it run 5 times already, this also saves the video file being bigger than it needs to be.
About a week ago, I decided to partition my 1TB hard drive to install a nice clean Windows 7 Home Premium (I gave this 10GB originally) OS along side my current and main Windows 10 Home installation for nothing other than my personal enjoyment, I like Windows 7. I am no stranger to this and it went perfectly with no issues, both worked perfectly with the system and the boot loader worked nothing other than normally. Skip forward to this morning.
I get up and switch on my computer, like every teen on a Saturday morning and I use my Windows 10 OS, again everything is perfectly normal at this point. I decide that I needed to mark my Windows 7 partition as active when really I didn't need to touch it and it was working fine before. I had then decided that I wanted to add another 10 GB to the partitioned sector of the hard drive because I had come to find that after installation, I didn't have sufficient space to move my virtual machines on there like I had intended to, for again nothing but my own personal use. (To be quite frank I was sick of them just sitting on my main install doing nothing but collecting dust, this is one of the reasons I did a dual boot, however I never got round to doing my VM installs on Windows 7 because of the monstrosity a certain freeware caused.) Because of this decision I shrunk my hard drive volume by 10GB, in preparation to extend my Windows 7 volume with it. I have always done it this way but today Disk Manager gave me the middle finger so I was forced to go online and search for other options I had.
I came across a freeware called AOMEI Partition Assistant, it had 4 stars on cnet so you can't go wrong, right? Well that's what I thought too. I'm not blaming my faults on the software but I don't think by any means it helped either. I downloaded it and got to work, I used the "merge volume" tool to add the 10GB of unallocated space I had to my Windows 7 sector - A forum I read recommended this software for "extending boot partitions without formatting", so I did. After it was finished - I did a quick restart and boom, I get boot errors thrown at me from the exact second I touch the power button, I thought it was toast.
"An operating system wasn't found. Try disconnecting any drives that do not contain operating systems and try again. Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart.
I was honestly baffled - but also not surprised, I had no option to see a boot loader so I got this error straight after BIOS. I was powerless. So I got my Windows 10 Home install disc out and attempted to repair my PC. After about an hour of fumbling around I finally managed to restore to boot loader menu on start up so I could choose what OS to boot into. Awesome. My Windows 10 installation was back and was working as good as ever, no files or programs were lost during this destruction
THANK LORD!Now sorry for the waffle but like I explained above, to avoid constant back and fourths on this thread I decided to give you a full detail post.
Now for my actual problem. Windows 7 is having none of it since the monstrosity I caused above (My Windows 10 however is like I said, back to normal and no corruptions.) I can choose it in the boot loader menu and everything looks normal until I reach the desktop. (I will attach a .zip file of all my pictures and videos demonstrating this so you can get a better idea.) This desktop has nothing, I can force start explorer.exe but that's it, once I get there I have access to nothing, not even My Computer. *I recommend you look at those images now*
I have a feeling it has something to do with a corrupt partition or registry, but I don't know so that's why I'm reaching out for help. If I have to reinstall I'll probably just get rid of the partition all together, considering it's already cause me enough trouble, however if I can I would like to at least try to save it first.
I have made all the needed back ups for Windows 10 now as I realized after a risky slip up like that I should probably update my system image. Windows 10 is perfect, Windows 7 is my issue as explained above, please help! :O
-FINAL NOTE-
On the video you will see that I skipped chkdsk, I would usually let this run but it claims to have no bad sectors every time - I have let it run 5 times already, this also saves the video file being bigger than it needs to be.
Last edited:
My Computer
- Computer type
- PC/Desktop
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- ASUS
- OS
- Windows 7 Home Premium, x64
- CPU
- AMD A6-6400K
- Motherboard
- ASUS A88XM-A
- Memory
- 8GB DDR3
- Graphics Card(s)
- AMD Radeon HD Graphics
- Hard Drives
- I'm not particularly sure of the make or model, although I know that it has a 1TB capacity, and is very reliable. I have both my OS and files on this without the use of SSD's. Watch this space, I will find out the manufacturer.
- Antivirus
- Avast!
- Browser
- Google Chrome
