I recently had problems with my machine that led to the hard drive needing to be wiped and Vista reinstalled (by a professional). I got the computer back and in my extreme foolishness I messed with the partitions. During the messing about I know I deleted any visible files in the data drive (D: ) including something called Bootsek.bak (I had googled this before deleting, and saw that it apparently was not important). I think I also changed the Active Partition to C: (the main drive), although I can’t remember if I changed this back.
I restarted the computer and a message came up saying “Bootmgr is missing. Press Alt+Ctrl+Del to restart”.
More foolishness: after seeing this message and restarting a couple of times without success I found my Fujitsu recovery disks that I burned when I first got the computer; I set the first one running before realising that I only had 3 out of the set of 4. I therefore didn’t continue after the first disk, and the current situation seems to be that my computer cannot access my c: at all.
When I allow my computer to start up as normal I get the message “Missing Operating System”.
I have a Vista recovery disk, and using the Startup Repair I am given error code 01xF, and Problem Signature 6 is CorruptVolume. From Dos I have tried running Chkdsk, but is says that my C:\ is RAW so it can’t do anything.
I have used a free disk partition recovery program (bootable as I don’t have any access to Windows), it identified that the majority of my disk space is located partly in an area of “Unallocated Space” and partly in a drive that has an error so it cannot access.
In case it is useful, I think the computer has renamed D: to X: ; I can access this drive and there is a Windows folder in there.
After all of that, I would be really grateful if someone could tell me if any of the options I have identified are possible, or suggest any others. I am happy to spend money if I need to, but I don’t want to waste it on something that won’t help, and I’d rather get this done myself rather than sending it back to a professional if at all possible. The computer had nothing on it other than Windows, so I’m not trying to save any personal files/data.
(a) Format computer entirely, buy a new copy of Vista, and start afresh. I haven’t tried formatting c:/ yet, although I understand that it is possible through DOS – is this likely to work given the RAW business described above? If this is possible, I assume I’d need to buy the full version and not just the upgrade?
(b) Buy a bootable partition repair program – do any of these work, any recommendations?
© It seems I can buy the Xi3650 recovery disks from an online seller, I would have thought my problem has gone beyond the ability of these disks but I suppose it’s an option?
Thanks for persevering through all of this, and I really appreciate any help anyone can give. *keeping fingers tightly crossed that this is salvageable*.
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