Solved Creating additional partition makes all partitions non-bootable

[ToughDiamond]

That folder is 14.4mb here, so still too big to attach. Over 11mb is in a subfolder called Fonts. Do you need that?

 

[SIW2]

Don't need the fonts

 

[ToughDiamond]

OK, here it is.

 

[SIW2]

The bcd entry was strange. The device elements were missing.

Have added a new bcd store ( the original is still in there called bcd-old )

Add these files to your boot folder ( it will ask if you want overwrite bcd - say yes - The original is still there as well - i renamed that to bcd-old )

View attachment boot-fixed.zip

 

[ToughDiamond]

Thanks. What will it do? Does it have any bearing on what happens on Factory Reset?

I see the date of the file I uploaded is before I bought the computer. It originally had a folder on the desktop with 35gb of the previous user's college files in it, so they obviously didn't do a factory reset before they sold it on. Hopefully it was a careful owner, but it's another reason for me to want to reset.

Yesterday's system backups work as expected. Ghost reliably restores the C partition regardless of my partition changes, though sadly it's not up to restoring the whole drive, it stops with an error halfway through the job. A sign of its age I guess. But Win7's own image feature has worked every time and includes the partitioning changes and all but the wretched HP_Tools volume which it simply doesn't include in its image. If that one turns out to be important, then factory reset seems like the simplest way to get it back, if only it works at all.

 

[ToughDiamond]

Good job with the boot image by the way. It's like Hiren's brought up to date.

 

[SIW2]

I wouldn't worry about it. Many people delete that partition. It is just a diagnostics program.
HP PC Hardware Diagnostics | HP® Official Site

 

[ToughDiamond]

Yes, there seem to be a few incarnations of it but I haven't seen anything vital in any of them. AOMEI BackUpper has just created a complete disk image, excellent transfer speed and acceptable file size. It's getting safer to try this factory reset button all the time. I wouldn't get much back that I don't already have, but as it's clear the previous owner didn't do a reset, the computer has been in an unknown state since I bought it, and a known squeaky-clean base image would put paid to the doubt.

Slightly off topic, but would your utility disk boot on these new Win10 boxes that don't allow legacy boot? I saw some encouraging EFI folders in there.

 

[SIW2]

It supports EFi boot, but you need to turn off secure boot. MS refuses to digitally sign win7 to support secure boot.

Just another one of their tricks to "persuade" the masses to move to win10.

 

[ToughDiamond]

I shudder to think what they'll dream up next.

Factory reset took ages but worked fine, partitions went back just as they were, HP_Tools and all. Made a Backupper full disk image of that (it'll be quicker to restore from that than to do an actual reset), then I reloaded the image I'd made just before the reset, and that worked fine too.

So I guess we're done here. Even if it bizarrely turned out I can't go the other way (i.e. reload the Backupper "factory reset" image), I could always do another real factory reset. I guess the next step will be to repeat all the useful changes I made since I bought the computer, but that won't be much.

I suppose the moral is, partitioning without experience is much better done after a full disk backup that's known to be reliable on the kind of drives that Win7 commonly lives on. WIn7's own image utility likes to delete "unwanted" images without warning, and only processes what it deems to be important drives, but didn't lose anything important or irrevocable in this case. Ghost 11.5 ruined everything without warning, and AOMEI worked fine even though I'd not used it before.

As a spinoff, The Disk Genius on the same boot disk as AOMEI was able to read a flash drive that nothing else had been able to since it "died" during a session in a slightly loose socket, and all but one file copied fine to a new home.

Thanks for all the advice and files. I couldn't be more pleased with the result.

 

[ToughDiamond]

I should add that it was risky to just delete the partition without first uninstalling the programs that used it. Didn't see any ill effects afterwards apart from a longer shutdown time, and that's cleared up now that I've done things in the right order.