I had an external harddrive go bad and I was attempting a to fix it with testdisk. I wasn't paying attention, was a long day of driving, and I selected my operating systems OS, windows 7. Here's the sequence of events:
Selected [No Log]
Selected Proceed
Selected Intel
Selected Analyse
Selected Quick Search
Highlighted the OS's partition and hit enter to proceed
Selected Write (to write partition structure)
It then said I needed to restart for changes to take effect. I restarted and it booted right into some sort of hardware diagnostics program that, I'm assuming, was installed by Dell. It seems like the I really screwed stuff up...
Can I fix this? Is there a way to boot into a Live version of linux or something and restore that partition??? Please give me some good news....
Wrote Partition Structure to Operating System's Disk Topic is solved
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When asking for technical support:
- Search for posts on the same topic before posting a new question.
- Give clear, specific information in the title of your post.
- Include as many details as you can, MOST POSTS WILL GET ONLY ONE OR TWO ANSWERS.
- Post a follow up with a "Thank you" or "This worked!"
- When you learn something, use that knowledge to HELP ANOTHER USER LATER.
Before posting, please read https://www.cgsecurity.org/testdisk.pdf
Re: Wrote Partition Structure to Operating System's Disk
Looks like that you forgot to set your OS-Partition as bootable.
Like it's described in this post;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/post ... dell#p2580
Would it be possible to check and correct it?
If you have any further questions, please let me know.
Fiona
Like it's described in this post;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/post ... dell#p2580
Would it be possible to check and correct it?
If you have any further questions, please let me know.
Fiona
Re: Wrote Partition Structure to Operating System's Disk
The problem is that I can't get into the OS, I can't run testdisk. It just goes right into some sort of hardware diagnostics thing. This is the main harddrive of the computer, not the external, so currently I have no OS working on that machine.
Re: Wrote Partition Structure to Operating System's Disk
So I used a copy of CAINE (http://www.caine-live.net/), which is pretty awesome live linux version with a bunch of tools for fixing issues with booting into the main OS, and I got back to the testdisk utility. I followed the post's suggestions to set the dell utility partition to de, make it P for primary, and then set the OS as * for bootable. That made an error come up when I restarted BOOTMGR MISSING PRESS CTRL+ALT+DEL TO REBOOT.
Progress, but not working. I then searched online trying to figure out how to fix that issue. I had thought maybe I had damaged the bootmgr somehow. I burned a recovery disk with my other windows 7 computer, booted it up and of course, it wasn't compatible... So I found some commands to manually delete and rebuild the BOOTMGR. I ran the delete and rebuilt it. Still no go.
So I remembered there was a recovery partition when looking through testdisk. I decided, maybe that will boot into the recovery/repair menu I need. I set that as * for bootable and put the other two partitions, DellUtility and OS, to P for primary. I booted it up figuring to find the recovery options and to my surprise it booted right up into my OS. I was confused and overjoyed. I tested to make sure all the files and stuff could be accessed and it looks like it's all good!
Thanks for the help/suggestions. Hopefully this helps anyone else with this problem...
Progress, but not working. I then searched online trying to figure out how to fix that issue. I had thought maybe I had damaged the bootmgr somehow. I burned a recovery disk with my other windows 7 computer, booted it up and of course, it wasn't compatible... So I found some commands to manually delete and rebuild the BOOTMGR. I ran the delete and rebuilt it. Still no go.
So I remembered there was a recovery partition when looking through testdisk. I decided, maybe that will boot into the recovery/repair menu I need. I set that as * for bootable and put the other two partitions, DellUtility and OS, to P for primary. I booted it up figuring to find the recovery options and to my surprise it booted right up into my OS. I was confused and overjoyed. I tested to make sure all the files and stuff could be accessed and it looks like it's all good!
Thanks for the help/suggestions. Hopefully this helps anyone else with this problem...
Re: Wrote Partition Structure to Operating System's Disk
Thanks for your feedback! 
I'll set your topic as solved.
best regards
Fiona
I'll set your topic as solved.
best regards
Fiona