Windows 7 won't boot, trying to recover MBR! Don't want to lose import

[Mr Davo]

Hi Everyone,

A friend of mine experienced a BSOD crash on their Windows 7 computer. Unfortunately I was not in a position to see the exact message that was presented, however in my experience this doesn't always make a great deal of difference. After offering to fix my friend's computer I quickly discovered that one of the installed RAM sticks is faulty. I replaced both RAM sticks, and tested - all is fine on the RAM front. However the hard drive also appears to be corrupt. Windows 7 will not boot, and I have tried the following to rectify the situation:

1). Booted into Windows Recovery (using the W7 installation disk)

2). Windows didn't detect an Operating System install, so I made my way to the Command Prompt

3). Executed a number of commands that would normally fix the MBR and other boot related issues, notice after both the bootrec.exe /fixmbr & the bootrec.exe /fixboot commands reported "...completed successfully"! Then I issued the bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd command and Windows 7 promptly informed me that it couldn't find any Windows installations...

4). I then considered the possibility that the wrong partition may be set active on the disk, so I tried swapping the Active partitions around (and once this didn't achieve anything I switched back!)

Having had no success with the Recovery options I physically removed the hard disk and connected it to a docking bay -

*** Whilst the docking bay is connected to Windows 7 (64 bit) I get the following message ***

*** When I then use an XP Virtual Machine, and connect the drive to it I get a slightly more promising message ***

I still really want to recover this disk, and boot into Windows 7 from it. There is quite a bit of personal data on this disk that my friend cannot replace. Any suggestions on how I might go about fixing this will be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

Davo

 

[Britton30]

Did you try running the Startup Repair? Perhaps 3 times.

 

[Kaktussoft]

chkdsk/f  c:
chkdsk/f  d:

No errors? all repaired? If repaired ... run it again.

sfc  /scannow  /offbootdir=c:\  /offwindir=c:\windows

post results

Has C folders called windows, program files etc? It looks as nothing is gone?
What error on normal boot?

 

[Kaktussoft]

diskpart
list vol
select disk 0
select part 1
detail part

post output

 

[Britton30]

Since OP can't boot he can't run cmd.

 

[Kaktussoft]

Since OP can't boot he can't run cmd.

He can in win7 recovery environment

 

[Britton30]

Since OP can't boot he can't run cmd.

He can in win7 recovery environment

Oh, I see, I missed where you mentioned the RE.