Cant find HDD for Windows 7 installation...

[vijayjames]

I tried installing Fedora 13 64 bit OS with dual booting enabled on my Windows 7 Ultimate OS. The partitions were 257 GB dedicated entirely for Windows (C: Drive) and the remaining 50 GB was allocated for Fedora installation.

I made grub as the default bootloader handler and completed the installation. But after this I started experiencing problems. I was unable to loginto Windows, as my system started showing the blue screen whenever I tried logging into Windows..After that, I made a whole mess by doing some unwanted steps which I never had any idea of..

Now I cant view my HDD to install Windows, No drives are being displayed soon after I select the "Custom option" to install Windows.. And When I click on "Load Driver" its just showing me an X: Drive which has around 100MB capacity and has four folders. I tried System Restore and some of the other options that were present in the Windows repair option but was unsuccessful..

I am confused as to what could have happened to my HDD and I would greatly appreciate your help in recovering my HDD. ( Is there any third party utility to wipe clean my HDD??? Reformat it completely and convert the partitions into NTFS, so that I could install a copy of windows) .

My laptop model Dell N5010...RAM 4 GB..HDD 320 GB...

Thanking you....

 

[Kinggo]

Active@Killdisk will completely wipe drive, it will also make data unrecoverable but it has worked for me every time. It basically gives you an empty drive.
I use the US DOD 3 Pass method and it takes between 5 to 8 hours to complete depending on the size of the drive but you can choose more or less passes.
Just install it on another machine, restart with the dead drive connected, select the dead drive and kill it.

It's a great program, good luck.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello vijayjames, welcome to Seven Forums!





You don't need a third party program any Windows 7 disk will do it natively, right in the target machine; have a look at this tutorial at the link below for the info and be sure to post back if you have any questions and to keep us informed.


SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation

 

[vijayjames]

Thank you so much for this pleasant Welcome. I tried as per the instructions adviced in the SSD/HDD page..Wow!! My HDD is back and its active now.... Thank you so much...
Now I have installed Windows and Fedora on it and its running fine...

I have a small concern as I cant create anymore partitions on my HDD..I am attaching a copy of my Disk Manager for your refernce (42 GB and 8 GB partitions shown are the linux partitions...) Kindly advise as to what could be done...

There is an error message stating that I cant create anymore partitions on the drive as the disk already contains maximum number of partitions...

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello again, I'm pleased we could help and thanks for the update.





If you choose you could do away with the "System Reserved" partition to the far left, be sure you understand the need to do the 3 separate startup repairs with the system restarts between each repair outlined in this tutorial at the link below, if you choose to remove that partition; if you have any questions feel free to ask them.

Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times



Also have a good look through this entire tutorial for some ideas to sort your partition issue.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

 

[Prof Kerfuffle]

I had this with vista and 7, format it and make sure it has no extra partitions, I did this using another computer.

 

[vijayjames]

Is it possible to create extended partitions on my Harddisk??..I would like to stay away from deleting the System Partition of 100 MB coz I have the linux files on it...

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Not with the current setup you have.

 

[gregrocker]

Delete the last two partitions on the HD, then use free Partition Wizard bootable CD to create Logical data partitions there.

 

[karlsnooks]

Vijay,
And if you right-click on that "unallocated" area, then
can't you choose the create a partition. Now what MS will do is create a "Logical Drive" there since you already have the max nr of partitions.

 

[vijayjames]

Finally my problem has been resolved.. I depended on a third party tool this time..I used the "Mini Tool Partition Manager" to succesively partition my HDD..

Once again...thank you so much to everyone who took the pain to help me out..

It gives me great priviledge to continue as a member of this forum...

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Finally my problem has been resolved.. I depended on a third party tool this time..I used the "Mini Tool Partition Manager" to succesively partition my HDD..

Once again...thank you so much to everyone who took the pain to help me out..

It gives me great priviledge to continue as a member of this forum...

Hello again.

It is our privilege to have you as a member.







Glad to see you found a solution that worked for you and thanks for the update.