Can't restore win 7 after ubuntu installation

poliseno · 21 Sep 2011

When I bought my laptop (a packard bell) I created a win7 recovery disc. My brother installed ubuntu on that laptop, erasing the entire disc, so my laptop now has only 2 partition (swap and ext4). Now I want to reinstall win7 but after having inserted the recovery disc, started the packard bell recovery tool, and followed the procedure, I get a message

Restoration failed - Error code=1005(the volume does not contain a recognized file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.)

I think it's because the Packard Bell tool doesn't find a disk point/partition where to reinstall win7.
How can I fix that?

thank you

Shadowjk · 21 Sep 2011

Note

You are going to need to find either a Windows 7 install Disk (Any edition) or borrow/use another Windows 7 laptop to create a System Repair Disk

You are going to have to make a recovery Disk or borrow one from someone because your Packard Bell recovery disk is trying to find a NTFS Partition

System Repair Disc - Create

You will then use this disk to boot into System Recovery Options

System Recovery Options

Once you have done that You are going to have to delete both Swap and ext4 Partitions by using Diskpart in Command prompt

Partition or Volume - Delete

If there is anything else I can help you with then please ask,
Josh

whs · 21 Sep 2011

Yeah, problem is that you have no primary NTFS partition on the HDD. So the installer does not know where to put the bootmgr and the system. Do the following:

1. Get the bootable CD of this program and burn it to CD (it is the last entry on the webpage): Free Download Magic Partition Manager Software - Partition Wizard Online

2. Load it from the CD reader and delete all partitions that are left on the HDD so that you get unallocated space.

3. Define a primary, active partition (size is up to you but should be at least 40GB)

4. install into that partition.

In Partition Wizard, you will find some of the required controls in Partition tab > Modify. The others should be pretty obvious. You always have to highlight the part you are working on. For more details, here is a good tutorial: Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD