No OS - blackscreen / possible partitions deleted / ubuntu

[Ghostmuffin]

Last night one of my friends was "guiding" me through an installation for Ubuntu to a flash drive. I was doing it on my current computer. I removed some partitions from the installation thinking it would just remove them from the list, I then tried to install it on the flash drive. (I also changed some of the NTFS FAT 32's around and stuff, But i don't know what that means)

It then brought me to a black screen with a blinking underscore.
After doing everything below, it now says Missing operating system.
So I might have made things worse.

I have tried the recovery Cd which I burned off of another windows7 computer, I tried bootrec.exe as well.

I'm not entirely sure what to do at this point. I am currently using the same computer, but on the trail version - "try ubuntu" of ubuntu. All of my files seem to be intact.

Also, when I ran one of the recovery options it had a box for listed OS's and none displayed, it also said select drivers to install to disk and brought me to system32. (I had no idea what to look at, at that point)

I also did

>diskpart
>slect disk 0
>list volume

and some other things...

Nothing seems to be working and I'm out of ideas and running short on time to get my work done.

Any help or additional information requests would be great.

 

[Night Hawk]

Hello GhostMuffin Welcome to the Seven Forums!

And into the world of despair since the flashing means a hard drive is not bootable not having any master boot record(mbr) entries or even an OS on it! When you "removed" some partitions apparently you removed C and any other partition on the host main drive not the flash drive!

Were you using GParted live for this?? or another partitioning program? In GParted Live the main drive would likely be seen as "sda" not Disk 0. If you were using the Disk Part tool and ran the clean or clean all command once you had run with the following commands here you wiped the main drive without a doubt!

Disk Part
List Disk
Select Disk 0
clean or clean all
exit

and say good bye to whatever was on the drive!

If you had been using the version of GParted found in a distro like ubuntu that version wants to take charge and partition, format the entire drive in favor of the flavor of Linux that would going onto the flash drive. If you inadvertently selected sda when the flash drive as sdb and nuked partitions there when clicking the apply buttong the scrolling bar you watched was the main drive being wiped instead!

Since a linux install disk if not direct from iso image was there to boot from when running the distro's installer you can boot into that disk live again and view the main drive to see if anything still remains on the drive that would suggest a failed install of the Grub boot loader while the 7 mbr was wiped as well. Then you would need to rebuild the boot sector information, entries along with the BCD store for 7.

The worst case would be confirming the main drive and since this sounds like an OEM prebuild the hidden recovery partition may have also been lost! That would eliminate the option for pressing the designate F key to select the factory restore option if that was present.

 

[Ghostmuffin]

Hello GhostMuffin Welcome to the Seven Forums!

I did not run a clean / clear all command. I did /bootsect /nt60 sus /mbr but on the CD drive
As well as Bootrec.exe with /fixboot and /fixmbr, with fixboot failing

System 32 and the C drive is still labled as OS with all the files in there, including the windows folder. Honestly Im a bit confused to if you are telling me to do something, or seeing what I might have done.

I also did not use Gparted or anything for this and didnt actually install ubuntu on my computer, or even fully on the flash drive.

Is there anything I can do at this point?

 

[Night Hawk]

Your mention of going through the motions of custom installing ubuntu on a flash drive is all too familiar with what I ran into back in early 2010 when creating data recovery sticks out of larger flash drives custom installing ubuntu or another distro to a second root parttition keeping the first NTFS on them.

The 7 mbr was "trashed" on one install by Grub! I forgot to edition the "mount point /" as the root and see Grub installed to the flash drive instead of the 7 host drive! I ended up running the repair tools booted live from the 7 dvd to rebuild the BCD store which then saw 7 load right again as usual.

For installing any OS I tend to use GParted except when wanting the 100mb System Reserved partition placed on the drive by the Windows installer. The cross platform support makes the live for cd version ideal for setting up any dual boots on the physical drives when not simply seeing a secondary OS go onto a VM.

The ubuntu installer itself has it's own form of GParted and that was why the quesiton had been asked about which partitioning program was used or how you went about deleting partitions. You also referred to the Disk Part tool as well.

The important thing now however since you found the 7 installation and all files are still present rules out C as what you had removed which should be a big relief for you there! Now the next step is repair of the boot information and files to get you back running again. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html

The Startup repair tool might work on it's own if you run that two or three times restarting inbetween each run. The command prompt would be used for seeing the BCD store rebuilt. Follow the steps closely and you should be back running real soon!

 

[Ghostmuffin]

I made a Cd from another computer that has windows 7 and tried this already :[ (recovery cd)
Specifically that thread. Maybe I did it wrong, but I did exactly that but with less in the list

When I did the one part where it lists the OS, nothing shows up.

Im downloading and burning a windows 7 install disc right now though, that might work better for repairs?

Sorry for the not knowing-ness and the confusion, its been a long 2 days :S

 

[Night Hawk]

For a more universal repair cd you can download a repair cd iso for 7 from Windows 7 Repair and Recovery CD Download | The NeoSmart Files

Sometimes the repair cd made using the 7 install on another machine will only be usable on that one machine and why it wouldn't see the 7 installation on another. The other option before any full clean install to try if you are still unable to repair the boot sector would be a repair install of 7. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

The method uses the Upgrade option once all of the latest updates are obtained to replace all of the main system files while keeping all programs and files intact. The process usually takes about 80min. or so. That would automatically write a new boot sector as well as replace any missing boot files needed.

Here once the next version's equivalent of an Release Candidate to be named Release Preview for 8 is available I'll be performing a full clean install of 7 along with that where the Windows Easy Transfer tool will take care of the user files and setting for most everything on now here that is. In your situation the repair install idea comes up if you continue to still have no success in fixing the boot for the present 7 install you have there.

 

[Ghostmuffin]

Already retried the bootsect, gonna go buy the CD and go from there.

Thanks a bunch for the assistance Night Hawk, you are a hero regardless of results.

Second link confuses me a bit, I guess that for If I have Issues after getting win7 back up?

 

[Ghostmuffin]

Seems like nothing it working. I'm slowly backing everything up and getting ready to use that install disc.

 

[Night Hawk]

The second link there is how to perform a repair install in 7 without simply wiping the present installation off entirely. That will repair any OS problems as well as rewrite the boot sector for you as one option to get back running again without the need to reinstall everything from start all over again.

If you knew that everything was running smooth without glitches prior to the flash drive project seeing the boot information lost this would be the preferred option by many since starting over fresh can be time consuming depending on how much you have on. The typical geek on the other hand would simply reformat and drop a fresh copy of 7 since 7 goes on much faster then any previous version as far as a clean install.

The backup you tending to now is a good habit to get into at any time just in case of some mishap or malware catastrophy where you need to wipe the drive and start fresh. The other option once everything is running again would be safe guarding everything if you have a second drive available with a full system image backup when everything is running well and you can't afford a drive wipe if something comes up. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/663-backup-complete-computer-create-image-backup.html

One thing I meant to ask is whether 7 came pre-installed on an OEM pre-build or this is a custom case you put together yourself? An OEM recovery wouldn't allow for an upgrade to repair install but simply wash the C primary in favor of seeing a fresh copy of Windows with factory wares go back on.

With a separate retail disk on the other you may see that be able to repair the present while the clean install option would certainly insure the boot problems were cleaned up rather fast too!