Impossible to fix Windows 7 MBR

[Jungchen]

Hi Everybody,

I recently installed Windows 7 alongside my XP on one and the same harddrive (creating a separate partition first using gparted)

Now, after almost two months I decided to delete Windows XP by formatting the partition in gparted.

Unfortunately, since then, Windows 7 won't start anymore.

I am familiar with the Command Prompt window of Win7 and tried almost everything that came to my mind.

I followed all instrcutions to repair the MBR with bootsect.exe from the Win7 DVD.

(example : bootsect.exe /nt60 SYS /mbr)
I also tried /force, ALL, etc.
The messages after applying these commands are positive, so it seems to have worked, but Win 7 still won't start. all i get is an empty screen.

No i noticed that my Main Drive is partitionned like this :

Disk 0
-> parition 1 (primary) : old win xp partition (now empty) 115gb
-> partition 0 : extended
->partition 2 : partition with music files (logical) 200 gb
-> partition 3 : win7 partition (logical) 150 gb

Maybe the problem comes from this odd partitionning, but it still worked with xp installed... I tried to make the win7 partition active with diskpart, but it does not work.

Does anyone have an idea on how to make my win7 restart again?

i really do not want to reinstal the whole thing !

thanks in advance

 

[Archean]

By formatting XP's partition you've erased all booting related info of windows 7 as well. And when you try to repair it I think whats happening is that its looking for windows on the 1st partition (where you probably had xp) hence it not working.

 

[Archean]

Please check this out, i hope it will help:

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

 

[Jungchen]

Hi Archean,

thanks for the info, but I also tried Bootrec.exe, but it does not seem to be working for windows7 (only for vista, I guess) I could not find it on the Win7DVD in the boot directory. And when attemtping the /FixBoot, I got the message "Element not found"

Any other Idea how to repair the link to my Win7 installation?

 

[Archean]

Well one way of trying to restore windows 7 booting issue is, reinstall XP on the partition you just formated; once its installed run command prompt with administrator account, and run the following from your Win7 Dvd:

x:\boot\ bootsect.exe /nt60 all

x = your dvd drive letter

 

[Archean]

If it works you can should see windows 7 entry; however if you wish to restore your then older OS (that will be XP offcourse) you need to run command prompt with admin. account again and:

bcdedit /create {ntldr} –d “Menu description goes here”

 

[Jungchen]

i will try this as soon as i'm finished backing up some files for the worse case scenario...

thanks

 

[Archean]

Alright, goodluck

 

[Jungchen]

I had another Idea.

If I copy all the content of the Windows 7 partition (extended) on the old windows xp parition (which is a primary partition) and then run the bootsect.exe /nt60 SYS /mbr, could my Windows 7 start again?

 

[Archean]

no it would give you even more headaches ..... because when you installed 7 in that extended partition what it did is create all the software references of that particular extended partition (whatever its drive letter may be). So i'll advise you to look at the solution i proposed.