Restart Win 7

[BeeJ]

Win 7 Pro
Power failure.
Boots to the underline in the upper left corner of the screen.
"Delete" into BIOS and everything looks OK.
See all the drives. Motherboard voltages good. Fans running.
C: drive is a 500G 3yr warrantee WD drive that is only a few years old.
I suspect that the boot sectors on the drive might have been wiped.

Starting from the least destructive method, what are the suggested ways
to attempt to bring C: back without a complete reload of C: programs
and data. BTW, all data has been backed up off the PC. I have other
PCs to create DVDs if needed.

 

[Fokke Nauta]

Win 7 Pro
Power failure.
Boots to the underline in the upper left corner of the screen.
"Delete" into BIOS and everything looks OK.
See all the drives. Motherboard voltages good. Fans running.
C: drive is a 500G 3yr warrantee WD drive that is only a few years old.
I suspect that the boot sectors on the drive might have been wiped.

Starting from the least destructive method, what are the suggested ways
to attempt to bring C: back without a complete reload of C: programs and
data. BTW, all data has been backed up off the PC. I have other PCs to
create DVDs if needed.

Sparks on a power line may damage the hard disk.
I would first try to connect the hd to another pc and see if you can
approach the data on it.

Fokke

 

[Jan Alter]

Win 7 Pro
Power failure.
Boots to the underline in the upper left corner of the screen.
"Delete" into BIOS and everything looks OK.
See all the drives. Motherboard voltages good. Fans running.
C: drive is a 500G 3yr warrantee WD drive that is only a few years old.
I suspect that the boot sectors on the drive might have been wiped.

Starting from the least destructive method, what are the suggested ways to
attempt to bring C: back without a complete reload of C: programs and
data. BTW, all data has been backed up off the PC. I have other PCs to
create DVDs if needed.

Start with the Win 7 installation disk and boot from it. Go to 'Repair' and
see if it will find the Win7 installation on your disk and if it will copy
the start up files back onto your hard drive to allow it to boot.

I am also thoughtful at the moment to whether or not your current
installation has Windows 7 with SP1 and if you then need to have an
installation disk of Win7 with SP1. I'm not sure. However, you could
download an ISO of Win7 with SP1 on it, then make a DVD and use that. Go to
the following link and choose
which installation you have.

http://www.mytechguide.org/10042/windows-7-service-pack-sp1-official-digitalriver-download/

 

[Paul]

Win 7 Pro
Power failure.
Boots to the underline in the upper left corner of the screen.
"Delete" into BIOS and everything looks OK.
See all the drives. Motherboard voltages good. Fans running.
C: drive is a 500G 3yr warrantee WD drive that is only a few years old.
I suspect that the boot sectors on the drive might have been wiped.

Starting from the least destructive method, what are the suggested ways
to attempt to bring C: back without a complete reload of C: programs and
data. BTW, all data has been backed up off the PC. I have other PCs to
create DVDs if needed.

If I boot a Linux LiveCD on my system, I can view all the
partitions as if they were data partitions.

That allows a quick look, to see if there are any partitions left.

If no partitions are apparent, you can run TestDisk from the Linux
LiveCD, and scan for partitions.

That's a way of surveying the situation, before actually fixing it.

If things seem mostly intact, you can move on.

*******

And the Windows 7 optical media, if you boot with that, has
various repair capabilities.

http://0.tqn.com/d/pcsupport/1/0/i/4/-/-/windows-7-startup-repair-7.jpg

If the startup repair doesn't work, using the Command Prompt (basically
an MSDOS console), allows you to issue commands manually.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

A more complete description of what to do, is here. This will
help you start the repair attempt, to get it booting again.
This has a few pictures.

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/windows-7-recovery-environment-command-prompt/

If initiated at the OS level, boot repair can try up to
three times, to fix things. The third try, it'll run
CHKDSK and read verify the sectors on C:. They save CHKDSK
for the third try, because it takes so long to run.
(I had this happen, and even after three tries, it could
not fix C: for me. On that occasion, I had to restore from
backup, a backup made that very day. Talk about lucky.)

Paul

 

[BeeJ]

Win 7 Pro

Power failure.
Boots to the underline in the upper left corner of the screen.
"Delete" into BIOS and everything looks OK.
See all the drives. Motherboard voltages good. Fans running.
C: drive is a 500G 3yr warrantee WD drive that is only a few years old.
I suspect that the boot sectors on the drive might have been wiped.

Starting from the least destructive method, what are the suggested ways to
attempt to bring C: back without a complete reload of C: programs and data.
BTW, all data has been backed up off the PC. I have other PCs to create DVDs
if needed.

Clues:

Win 7 Pro Recovery sees a C: of 100M and a D: of multi-gig and all the
other drives. D: showing as part of the 500G (C drive.
WIn 7 Pro Repair ran but made no statment about what it did. Reboot to
same NO Boot.
My install DVD is Win 7 Pro SP1.

Linux Mint 12(from DVD load up) sees C: of 500G (correct) and all the
other drives.

This does not make much sense to me Win7 sees 100M and Mint sees 500G.

I am now copying C: to a folder on another drive just to save the
latest files using Mint copy / paste.

What other tools are available to restore without losing programs?

How can I get a copy of the registry? Will I neeed that?

 

[Dave]

I am now copying C: to a folder on another drive just to save the latest
files using Mint copy / paste.

What other tools are available to restore without losing programs?

How can I get a copy of the registry? Will I neeed that?

I would get hold of a copy of bootit bare metal from:
www.terabyteunlimited.com you might need access to any windows machine to
create boot media. You can then boot that in maintenance evaluation mode
to see what you have and restore a std mbr code for windows7. This will
show you what partition is set to active. It's not normally the windows
partition on pre-loaded machines. My Dells boot to a recovery partition,
but if it got that far on your system you probably wouldn't have a problem.
Beware of suggested solutions that involve entailing expense or
unnecessary work until you have exhausted the simpler solutions.
There is also a thing called Hiram recovery dvd that is worth burning but
I've never actually used it to recover anything.

 

[Paul]

Clues:

Win 7 Pro Recovery sees a C: of 100M and a D: of multi-gig and all the
other drives. D: showing as part of the 500G (C drive.
WIn 7 Pro Repair ran but made no statment about what it did. Reboot to
same NO Boot.
My install DVD is Win 7 Pro SP1.

Linux Mint 12(from DVD load up) sees C: of 500G (correct) and all the
other drives.

This does not make much sense to me Win7 sees 100M and Mint sees 500G.

I am now copying C: to a folder on another drive just to save the latest
files using Mint copy / paste.

What other tools are available to restore without losing programs?

How can I get a copy of the registry? Will I neeed that?

The partition lettering in Recovery Console, is not the same as the
letters used in the actual OS. They're just listed in ascending
order in the Recovery Console.

At least you can see the partitions, so they're OK.

*******

Is there any chance a BIOS setting changed ?
Like a SATA port setting ?

Paul

 

[Krypto]

Waste of time.


Not possible.


It's time to get a new hard drive, reinstall Windows and all your
programs. I assume you already tried using your Win 7 DVD to repair and
you don't have an image backup.

Sounds like your boot file is fubar. To fix: boot off a repair disk or
your Win 7 disk and go to the command prompt and fix your boot file.
It's quite easy. Here are some commands you can use to fix your
problem:

BootRec.exe - brings up list of commands

Bootrec /fixmbr - fix the master boot record

Bootrec /FixBoot. Writes a boot sector onto the system partition to
start Windows

Bootrec /RebuildBcd. Scans all disks for Windows installations and
prompts you to pick the ones you want to add to the BCD.

Bootrec /RebuildBcd usually works for me.

Krypto

 

[BeeJ]

Paul wrote on 5/20/2013 :

The partition lettering in Recovery Console, is not the same as the
letters used in the actual OS. They're just listed in ascending
order in the Recovery Console.

At least you can see the partitions, so they're OK.

*******

Is there any chance a BIOS setting changed ?
Like a SATA port setting ?

Paul

BIOS shows many 1st thru N boot devices and I think that the "C:" drive
is among them. I changed the 1ST to boot the Linux disk on DVD.

I think all drives are there so I am hoping that it is the boot.ini or
whatever else might get mangled is repairable. If not then?

 

[BeeJ]

Krypto submitted this idea :

Sounds like your boot file is fubar. To fix: boot off a repair disk or
your Win 7 disk and go to the command prompt and fix your boot file.
It's quite easy. Here are some commands you can use to fix your
problem:

BootRec.exe - brings up list of commands

Bootrec /fixmbr - fix the master boot record

Bootrec /FixBoot. Writes a boot sector onto the system partition to
start Windows

Bootrec /RebuildBcd. Scans all disks for Windows installations and
prompts you to pick the ones you want to add to the BCD.

Bootrec /RebuildBcd usually works for me.

Krypto

I'll see if I can figure that all out.

 

[BeeJ]

After serious thinking Dave wrote :

I would get hold of a copy of bootit bare metal from:
www.terabyteunlimited.com you might need access to any windows machine to
create boot media. You can then boot that in maintenance evaluation mode
to see what you have and restore a std mbr code for windows7. This will
show you what partition is set to active. It's not normally the windows
partition on pre-loaded machines. My Dells boot to a recovery partition,
but if it got that far on your system you probably wouldn't have a problem.
Beware of suggested solutions that involve entailing expense or
unnecessary work until you have exhausted the simpler solutions.
There is also a thing called Hiram recovery dvd that is worth burning but
I've never actually used it to recover anything.

So bootit has boot restore capability?

 

[...winston]

"BeeJ" wrote in message

So bootit has boot restore capability?

bootit bare metal provides the ability to create boot media from a functional o/s (in your case probably a need for another Win7
SP1 machine). Once done the created media can be used to restore/replace a damaged or corrupt boot code.

Earlier you noted the presence of a 100MB partition in addition to a partition(s) holding the balance of the your 500GB drive.

That 100 MB partition is most likely the System Volume Partition which holds the boot code. In Windows 7 the System Volume handles
the boot process prior to passing control to the o/s partition (Boot Volume) which then loads the operating system.

 

[BeeJ]

And this?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/

 

[Paul]

And this?

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/

It's possible the Startup Repair does more than
the manual commands would. Like, if some
boot file was missing.

I expect the file store in C:, has copies of stuff
that could be used to populate SYSTEM RESERVED, for
example.

When I got in trouble, the startup repair did CHKDSK
on C:, on the third attempt to repair it. So the repair
strategy changes from pass to pass. The startup repair
tries the "easy stuff" first.

Paul