Solved Invalid system partition

[Rave79x]

Boot 7 dvd to system recovery options command prompt. Type:

Diskpart

lis vol

( find the vol letter e.g C or partition number e.g. 1 for the system partition )

sel vol C ( or sel vol 1 , obviously use the correct letter or number)

act

exi

see if that helps.

After doing the above, I also got BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

But after I ran Windows Recovery again twice (it did something a little differently each time) I managed to boot in.

I also replaced the Sata and power cable to my system drive as a precaution.

I suspect a cable just came loose though because this happened after I disconnected a backup HDD.

Am wary of a hardware issue though so am taking plenty of backups.

Thanks for your help in this thread.

 

[gasrange]

How would I go about tackling the issue if doing Diskpart; lis vol does NOT display my Windows partition that needs repairing?

 

[SIW2]

You might try free partition wizard bootable iso.

If that doesn't see the partition, try the partition recovery feature.

Tick ALL partitions you want , then Apply.

Free download Magic Partition Manager Software, partition magic alternative, free partition magic, partition magic Windows 7 and server partition software - Partition Wizard Online

 

[gasrange]

ty, that worked like a charm. now i see the partition i want on diskpart lis vol.
Going further down the above instructions, 'act' gives me an error saying the specified partition type is not valid for the operation (i did sel vol on the right partition). the info on the volune is:

Fs: NTFS
Type: Partition
Size: 106 GB
Status: Healthy

It is a partition restored with winclone with an image of a partition i used to boot off of all the time...

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[SIW2]

It is probably a logical drive.

You can convert it to Primary with partition wiz.

Rt click it and select Modify>Set partition as Primary.

( If it won't allow that, you already have 4 partition slots taken up )

 

[gasrange]

that set me on the right track, and i got my partition back the way it was.

thank you scholars for your gentlemenly help.

may your days brim with joy and exhuberance.

 

[segwayglider]

Hi there - I'm needing help as well. This thread is very informative. I have a SSD drive as well and all of a sudden my system wouldn't start up - just a black screen. I disconnected all drives and everything else and then is said to insert bootable material. I used the win 7 DVD and used the act command in diskpart with the right volume selected. After the reboot it now says bootmgr is missing hit ctrl+alt+del to restart. So I try to run the repair section on the win DVD and it says the version of windows on the disk is incompatible with the win disk. I know its the same win version. What do I do? I do have a USB device I can put the SSD drive into on another computer (did this first to make sure the data was still on the SSD when I first noticed a problem). Thank you a ton for your time!

Pat

I just figured out that the win dvd repair tools will work if the SSD partition is not active. Once I set that partition to active I get the "not compatible" message and the repair tools wont load. Kinda stuck in a loop here. ???

 

[Lajamoto]

Big Thanks to SIW2

That's fine - you might fix it with running startup repair 2-3 times,
or use cmd prompt again and type:

bootsect /nt60 all /mbr

then press enter.

k, lol at press enter. I deserved that though. im a freaking zombie today.

Just had to send a big thanks to SIW2 for taking the time to help so many people. i also had a boot error with Win 7 after playing around with my partitions. i had installed Win 7 64-bit on a new HDD and was dual booting my pc with an older HDD running Vista 32-bit. I dual booted to copy over all my files and pictures. I then erased the old driver and began to setup the new OS to leverage the old HDD as a backup drive. Win 7 backp utility failed everytime and threads indicated modifying partition sizes. This caused system to loose boot and in turn make the disk fail. Thanks to your instructions i was able to make my drive active again, ran startup repair 3 times just as you said and I am back in business and my wife will not kill me for loosing several thousand pictures and several hundred gigis of music.

 

[SIW2]

Thanks for letting us know. Glad it worked for you.

 

[Purplequavers]

URGENT: Is this safe for SSD? Please help!

Boot 7 dvd to system recovery options command prompt. Type:

Diskpart

lis vol

( find the vol letter e.g C or partition number e.g. 1 for the system partition )

sel vol C ( or sel vol 1 , obviously use the correct letter or number)

act

exi

see if that helps.

Hi SIW2, or anyone else able to please help me!!

I have received the same message in Windows Startup repair: "The partition table does not have a valid system partition"
Repair action: Partition table repair
Result: Completed successfully

The system restarts but still will not boot windows. It only loads up to the windows install / repair screen. If I take out the Win7 CD and restart, I get the message "Reboot and select proper boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected boot drive and press a key". The BIOS IS detecting the SSD and it is the top of the boot order list.

So my main question is - I want to try your fix, but is it OK to do it on an SSD drive?

I dont know much about partitioning or how it works in detail. I'm pretty sure my drive wasn't partitioned before because it would have shown up as 2 drives in windows? (3 if you include my Samsung HD)

Back story / System spec:
Custom build PC
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Intel Core i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz
ASUS P7H55-M PRO
Hard Drives
OCZ-VERTEX2 SATAII SSD 80GB
SAMSUNG GD103SJ 1TB
WD EXTERNAL 1TB
Case: Cooler master
Cooling : Water cooled

What happened:
My friend built this PC for me 3 years ago. I did not know that you weren't meant to defrag an SSD drive. I defragged my C drive (SSD with Windows installed) then it would only load to Windows welcome, then white screen, no desktop icons, nothing except the cursor this is pretty stressful for me as I work from home as a professional music composer and this is my main machine to work on. My laptop is pretty useless.

He said try inserting Win7 DVD and using windows startup repair. I did this and got the partition info message I mentined above, but although it says it was successful, I'm not getting any further.

All my work is backed up but I do not have a recent system restore point and no system image so I'm trying to avoid having to reinstall everything.

Also I should note that I am technically minded and good at following technical instructions, but am in no way a computer expert so please tell me everything in laymans terms and please dont use acronyms unless my computer shows it as an acronym e.g. BIOS!

Thanks so much for your time reading this!

Purple

 

[SIW2]

Yes, it is fine for SSD.

 

[Purplequavers]

Thanks SIW2. I tried it, googleing to see which one was my system partition. I thought it was C: 100mb so used that in disk part but didnt work. Then I got a reply from my friend saying no it's E: 60gb that I want. So I ran it again, trie that, and tried the boot mgr for all, but still doesnt work. I'm getting "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media and press a key"...

My Bios is detecting my SSD but will not put it in the boot list??

Any ideas?

EDIT: AHA I'm getting somewhere, now I have got the SSD recognized as a boot device, I've got "BOOTMGR is missing
Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart"

??

 

[RobF50]

Hey guys - I'm in a bit of an emergency at work here.

I'm on an HP workstation, originally it has CentOS installed (I think on one HD), and XP on another - I installed another HD, and upgraded to Win 7. Everything has been working perfectly, even after about 4Gb of updates !
However, then what I needed to do was format the drive with XP on it so that I can use it to store our image sequences (VFX work).
After I killed the partition and told it to format (using free software from filehippo iirc) - it then won't boot into Win 7. It keeps trying to go into some kind of CentOS option list.
Using the previous commands - I can see that win 7 is still drive C/vol 1 but I can't seem to get it to boot at all.
(no options in the bios either) - I also tried disconnecting the other 2 HD's inside, and just the main Windows one but to no avail.

Argh, not sure what to do - and I've got a massive pile of work now haha.


Tried:
----------
Diskpart

lis vol

( find the vol letter e.g C or partition number e.g. 1 for the system partition )

sel vol C ( or sel vol 1 , obviously use the correct letter or number)

act

exi
-------------------------------------

And tried

bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /ScanOs (finds it)
bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd (gives me the 3 options, yes/no/all - but says Eliment not found after Y or A)




I've got a feeling I need to some how get vol 1 set as primary.

 

[RobF50]

Hmm, according to the 'list partition' command it is primary.
No idea what to do - in a panic !

EDIT:
Disconnected the other drives again, and retrying the Win 7 DVD tools, it seems to have picked something up this time...

EDIT 2:
Ok I'm sort of getting somewhere.
When I disconnect the other 2 drives, whatever it did in that repair thing from the DVD allows me to boot up Win 7.
So I'm now trying to work out how to boot up but with the other drives connected, this seems to be what's causing a conflict.

 

[SIW2]

Never mind that bootrec stuff, hit it with bcdboot.

bcdboot win7partitionletter:\windows /s otherdriveactivepartitionletter:

You don't have bcdboot.exe in your installed windows, so do it from the booted dvd.

 

[RobF50]

I shall give that a go in a moment, many thanks !
I'm just checking out Gparted to help out as well.

 

[RobF50]

Didn't work out for me, it's this ruddy Linux partition(s) - so I'm going to kill them, and someone else can install that another day

Well, I've re-arrange some cabling, pulled out the Linux drive and it boots into windows at least for now.
So I'll get our tech guy to look whenever he comes in next - serious weird stuff !

 

[hdmiproblem]

gparted is very bad.

if you have same issue again

use minitool media builder to create a usb flash partition manager.
boot from it
fix mbr or gpt whatever you had

 

[RobF50]

I found out why there was a problem, there is some kind of hard wired device in our systems that bring linux install thing up (and the SATA cabling order made a difference) !
So no amount of bits of software would actually solve my particular issue, anyway - for now it's cool and our tech guy will end up sorting something out in the future. But for now, thankfully things are ok.

 

[allenallen]

No valid system partition

Hi SIW2,

I've run into pretty much the same trouble and could really use your help. This is the most relevant page I've found.

I was using my pc when it just went to the bsod. No new hardware and since the problem disconnected all usb peripherals except my mouse. No new installation of software. I'm running windows 7 professional on an ocz vector ssd. I've tried swapping the memory sticks out as well and reconnecting the cables. I'm running the windows recovery wizard.

My ssd is no longer detected as a valid system partition. Both in command prompt (diskpart) and the partition wizard tool you linked to, my ssd is not listed at all. Is there anything else I could try? I can also no longer boot from the partition wizard iso cd and I'm given the error that it does not contain os files.