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The steps that got me to where I cant boot Windows 7.
Using Ubuntu 18 installation DVD, I resized the 500Gb Windows partition to 200GB, but the installer would not proceed after this and I hit the install button that overwrites the whole drive thinking there would be another warning if that was the case.
I halted installing immediately, and with Testdisk, recovered the windows partition, now 200GB and the HP recovery partition, and another small utility Fat partition.
The windows 7 partition did not start at 0 but all the files including recent software I had installed are visible from linux and thought that it should be OK.
However, trying to boot Windows resulted in cant find winloader.exe, even though it is present.
I installed ubuntu on the new space I had created, it reccognised the existing Windows partition and created the grub boot for both systems.
Still when selecting Windows, it requires installation disk, and cant find winloader.exe error.
Ubuntu 'disks' app shows the newly created partition both as an extended partition and the ext linux partition in the same space.

I tried a deeper search in Testdisk, this found a small partition with fstarting at 0 but when I tried setting this to be the bootable partition, I only got a black screen and flashing cursor
I would like to be able to get my updated Windows7 going without reinstalling if possible, for one thing though the laptop has a window registration sticker, I don't have any installation disks.
Thanks for any suggestions/help
Ronald

With original Windows CD/DVD (yes, you really need them), you should be able to select Repair the existing Windows installation.

Thank you for your advice, but will any Windows 7 install DVD do or does it /have/ to be the one used on the laptop originally?
It is beginning to sound like I have lost my working Windows system for good.

Buying an installation/repair medium from the notebook manufactorer is a posible solution.

MS referred me to HP when I entered the product key, but HP site doesn't offer a download, well there is an exe with supposed recovery iso for usb, no good to me at the moment. Another option is a Windows 10 download and try the key, but they also say use HP for this factory installed model, due to drivers mostly I think.
I am wondering if I put the 200GB partition back up to 500GB NTFS whether it would boot Windows then.
Just what is it objecting to when not booting?
There seems to be a few people that do a fixit program, about $40 for PRO version.
Probably time to cut my losses, and biff the Navman GPS that needs Windows do do the lifetime map updates as well.
Ronald

Well, took time but got my original Windows 7 running again.
I downloaded a Windows 10 installation iso and thankfully didn't have to find out whether it would have installed.
Using the repair option, the gui method for repairing the Windows 7 boot failed, so it was then down to what could be done with the command line. As a windows newby I was baffled for a way to read the srttrail.txt logfile that the failed gui method produced.
In linux I could use 'cat' to veiw this.
No matter, It was reassuring to be able to run chkdsk on the four partitions Testdisk reinstated and get no errors.
At one point I had Testdisk report that the MFT and MFT mirror are bad for the first (SYSTEM) partition so I then ignored this.
Still just a flashing cursor when trying to boot the SYSTEM partition.
Note that my laptop installation does not use UEFI
Using bootrec was ok except for /fixboot which produced 'access denied'.
Googling finds a lot of things related to EFI but for me it was the use of
bootsect /nt60 C;
that then allowed
bootrec /fixboot
to work.
C: referrs to the 300MB 'SYSTEM" (first partition), D: the main windows content partition etc.
After that restarting windows 7 progressed to windows boot recovery option which cured things completely for the booting.
Ronald