Solved PLEASE HELP- Dynamic Disk Showing Inactive/Volume with E:/ missing

[dtdlurch]

<SOLVED> Dynamic Disk Showing Inactive/Volume with E:/ missing

Hello all,

I'm a bit of a lurker on this forum as I'm generally not experienced enough to offer advice, but can always rely on this forum to already have already answered any questions I may need to ask. So, as this is my first post in awhile (possibly ever), I wanted to first say thank you for being an amazing forum and community of experts. You have no idea how much I've learned from sevenforums.com.

I have finally found myself in a bit of a pinch that I cannot find my way out of with guidance from tutorials or previously asked questions. I'm just gonna dive right into, so thank you ahead of time for putting up with my long-windedness/rambling:

I'm running my Win7 OS from a 40GB solid state disk (C:/), with all my other files going to my 500GB disk (E. I was attempting to partition the E: drive in order to dual boot Ubuntu Studio on it. Ran into issues while doing so and made several attempts from several different methods to get it to successfully partition. Finally, after awhile I managed to up about 90GB as the Linux "Ext4" filesystem, leaving the remaining 410GB alone. However, in the multiple attempts to do this via GParted and Windows Disk Manager, it somehow managed to turn the large partition (410GB for Windows files) into a dynamic partition and no longer a basic. Never gave me any issues though until I successfully shrunk the disk and created the second partition of 90GB.

Anyway, after creating the 90GB linux partition from within the Ubuntu Setup/Installation, I restarted into Windows. I clicked on my usual login, but it got hung up for about 5 minutes and finally put me into a temporary login. I restarted again to see if that would clear it up, but this time when I tried to log in it would give me an error saying "User Login Service failed". Tried to use my Windows 7 Install disk to run a repair, but it didn't recognize my Windows 7 Installation for some reason. But, it boots into the login screen fine...I just can't log in. All my User Files were moved off the boot drive(SSD-40GB) onto the large hard drive, so I assumed this is why I could log in-I must have FUBAR'd the partition with all my windows files.

Ran the Install Disk again to use recovery tools, pulled up command prompt and ran diskpart. It showed my secondary hard drive (the 500GB) as "Inactive". Listed the partitions still showing the two that should be there, the "dynamic" with all my windows files and an empty "Ext" partition of about 90GB. When I do a "list vol" it brings up only two Volumes, my C:/ 40GB SSD drive and then my CD drive. The volume with my E: drive assigned just wasn't there.

I've managed to boot my computer up with the Parted Magic linux dist from a liveUSB. But, at this point, I don't know what to do. I've seen a lot of people with similar problems be told to just change the partition from "dynamic" to "basic" with a non-destructive tool. But then....I booted up fine several times after the partition was labeled dynamic. Did I mess up the partition table and subsequently remove the E: volume? Could it be as simple as just creating another Volume with the Drive E: so that it will recognize it again. Also, through Parted Magic, I can explore the disk and everything is still there and hunky-dory. I didn't reformat it or anything. I used several partition detail programs to just look at the partitions, and it doesn't seem to list anything wrong with them.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but I'm at my wits end here. Plus, wanted to put as much info as possible out there.

Thank you.

<edit>

Solved! First response was all that was needed. Thank you for your help.

 

[gregrocker]

Use free Partition Wizard bootable CD version 4.2 which still allows free conversion from Dynamic to Basic. pw422.zip ISO - Windows Live

Convert to Basic as Dynamic is used to span a partition across multiple HD's. You should have been warned about this in Disk Mgmt.

Parted Magic is a dated XPired-era tool which is inferior to modern PW CD which we have used to help hundreds if not thousands of users successfully here since Win7 release.

If Win7 will not boot, make sure it's partition is marked Active then boot the Win7 DVD Repair console or Repair CD to run Startup REpair up to 3 separate times with reboots until Win7 starts.

 

[dtdlurch]

Thank you! All fixed up. Took me a few extra minutes to get the User accounts back under control. But, switching from dynamic to basic was almost too easy.

I obviously made the issue more complicated than it needed to be. Sorry to spam the board with just another version of the same question you have answered so many times. I really appreciate your patience and advice, though.

THANK YOU!

 

[seavixen32]

Pleased to hear that gregrocker's solution fixed things for you and thanks for your kind comments about WSF......"I wanted to first say thank you for being an amazing forum and community of experts. You have no idea how much I've learned from sevenforums.com."