A buddy accidentally deleted his boot partition. questions?

[doodler]

Hello all

I am sitting here with a buddies DELL inspiron M5030. I am currently getting the "Windows failed to start" that lists "File:\boot\BDC" "status: 0xc000000F

What I don't have:

The original windows install/repair CD. It did not ship with the laptop, and he didn't make a copy. ( I know this cd would easily fix my problem :sarc

I also only have a general idea as to the variety of the operating system: the owners tells me its windows 7 64bit but doesn't know the variety. Not sure if that matters)

What happened is

I guess while he and his friend were trying to install a "duel boot Linux Mint 13 partition" they ran into some issues with several small partitions which confused them during the install. Somehow this confusion led them to delete? format? or change the status of the most important partition on a windows machine. (they say they did not delete or format it, they said they accidently switched it to active)

The owner was having problems with slow operation before and is what led him to install a mint partition on my advice. Since I underestimated the difficulty :huh: of accomplishing the task I have volunteered to try and fix it.

questions: ( I am trying to find a fix that does not involve a 3gig download )

Are there any options short of downloading an ISO of windows 7?
can a recovery repair disk accomplish this task?
can one be downloaded?

I can boot into a Linux mint desktop from CD. Is it possible to change the status of the partition from mint?

I also have Microsoft VM 2007 x64 on my own laptop, is it possible to create a bootable instance of VM to make the changes? ( I have really only used it in networking class).. My laptop has windows 8 professional and not windows 7.

I also have a ISO of the debug/checked windows 7 on a dvd. I tried to get this to boot and had no luck though. Maybe I need a bootable ISO creator?

Thank you all for reading and hopefully helping me out

 

[bobafetthotmail]

Have a look at what partitions are still there with the linux's partition manager program.

There should be a very small one (100 mb or so) at the beginning of the drive, set that to active if it isn't already, as that contains the Win7 bootloaders.
There should be another around 5 GB or less that is the recovery partition. If you are relatively lucky during POST (there is white text on blackscreen) there is a key you can press to initiate a recovery to factory conditions. If the partition with that is still there anyway.
There should be the primary partition which should be pretty big and not marked as active.

WHat do you see?

 

[whs]

A recovery/repair disc or any Win7 installation disc can do the job. Run startup/repair 3 times. But first make sure that you have an active partition where to place the bootmgr - if the system partition has disappeared, the C partition is the next best choice.

You can use the bootable CD of Partition Wizard (last entry on the webpage) to check the partition status and activate C. Highlight C, go to the partition tab > Modify.

 

[doodler]

If you are relatively lucky during POST (there is white text on blackscreen) there is a key you can press to initiate a recovery to factory conditions.

I guess I am not that lucky When I change boot devices I don't get the option either. I will go check out Linux after I try the bootable partition manager (suggested in the post below by whs ) Both are great ideas. thank you both, and I will report back on my finding

once again thank you

Ok I loaded partition manager and it booted right up

I have the following partitions

Dellutility 100.00mb Fat/primary/hidden (will try changing this to active)
*recovery 9.07gb ntfs/primary/none
* (just a blank field) 3.75gb unallocated/logical/none (the partition mint made I am sure)
* (just a blank field) 1.84 gb ext4/logical/none (Linux boot partition?)
* OS 283.34gb ntsf/primary/active

those are my options. I don't see any small partitions for the bootloaders

 

[whs]

Take the OS partition since it is active.

 

[doodler]

what do you mean by take?

if I open the OS partition I see a boot folder and some files that are not in files:

dell.sdr
bootmgr
bootsect.bak
hiberfil.sys
pagefile.sys

 

[whs]

So there is a bootmgr on C. So it seems to be an MBR problem. Try this: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html