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Old 12-10-08, 19:58   #1
ANoDE
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Default Stupid action: Deleted primary partition

Hey there!

I did the most stupid thing today:
I was trying to extend the size of my vista partition by deleting my old XP partition and adding it to the vista one.

So far so good, gparted worked fine and did as told. Unfortunately now I don't have any Primary Partition left, just One extended, where 2 logical partitions are set up (the vista one and the data one).

I was hoping the Vista disk could fix that error automatically, but unfortunately my system won't boot, even though the restore-manager states that it has restored the boot sector on the C: (Vista) partition.

Can I somehow edit the MBR to get my system running again, without formatting and repartitioning??

thanks for your advice!
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Old 12-10-08, 20:02   #2
EscondeR
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1. Boot your computer from the Windows Vista Installation DVD
2. Press a key when prompted to continue
3. Choose your language, time, keyboard and click Next.
4. Click "Repair your Computer".
5. Now, from the System Recovery Options dialog, select the "Operating System" you want to repair, then click Next.
6. From the "Choose a Recovery Tool" dialog menu, select "Command Prompt"
7. Type the following into the "Command Prompt Window":
Code:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot
8. Remove the Vista Installation DVD and restart your PC.

Last edited by EscondeR; 12-10-08 at 20:09. Reason: Vista
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Old 12-10-08, 20:32   #3
ANoDE
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Thanks for your quick response!
Unfortutnately the program states, that the "element was not found".

The Vista Startup Repair Tool also states, that there is no System partition found.

How can I declare my Vista partition as a system partition?
Or can I somehow create a primary partition that can be used for booting?
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Old 12-10-08, 20:33   #4
tlr online
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For data recovery, you can use File Scavenger 3.0 which will search the drive and should restore the deleted information. Do not use the drive in the meantime tho. Only when you are ready to restore the data if the MBR build fails.

For restoring partitions, there is also a program called VistaBootPro. I'll do some research and get back to you.
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Old 12-10-08, 20:48   #5
ANoDE
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Well, thank you for your help, guys!

I've just started the restore job for all the drives so that I will have the same partitions and data I had before.
I will still have the space problem, but at least I'm gonna have an operating system

I really appreciate your help!
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Old 13-10-08, 05:04   #6
EscondeR
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I suggest you the following:

A. Recover the previous state of HDD (before deleting primary part.), backup your personal data, then repartition as you need (kill and concatenate any partitions), reinstall Vista (or XP - as you wish) and bring necessary data back.

B. If you had no personal data on XP partition (the one you have deleted - primary), boot from any type of recovery media and create empty primary partition exactly of the same size it was (it'll cover now unpartitioned space), then return to my previous advice and write MBR and loader to it. Then do anything you like: backup, then repartition (pos. A)

Vista Boot Pro Justin
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