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    Z11 cannot boot - please help!

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by 18000rpm, Oct 21, 2010.

  1. 18000rpm

    18000rpm Notebook Consultant

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    I was trying to free up the space used by the recovery partition using Partition Wizard ( http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html). There was a 100MB system partition between the main partition and the recovery partition so I had to delete that as well and merge everything into one big partition.

    Partition Wizard ran successfully and merged the partitions, but now Windows will not boot up ("Operating System Not Found").

    I believe Windows 7 Repair can repair it, but it cannot read the SSD. I am asked to "Load Drivers" when I try to repair, but I am only provided a file browser and I don't know what file to choose.

    Please help!!
     
    18000rpm, Oct 21, 2010
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  2. 18000rpm

    18000rpm Notebook Consultant

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    I just realized that under Windows 7 repair I can actually read the unbootable C: drive, but the disk is not listed under the "Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows. Select an operating system to repair." The list is empty.
     
    18000rpm, Oct 21, 2010
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  3. 18000rpm

    18000rpm Notebook Consultant

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    Managed to fix it by pressing shift-F10 to get a command prompt in Windows 7 recovery mode, and entering a bunch of diskpart and fixmbr commands. Phew...
     
    18000rpm, Oct 21, 2010
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  4. jeffreybaks

    jeffreybaks Notebook Deity

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    next thing to do , get a backup schedule going!
     
    jeffreybaks, Oct 21, 2010
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  5. H.A.L. 9000

    H.A.L. 9000 Occam's Chainsaw

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    On a normal Windows 7 install with the OEM partition, there are usually 3 partitions. One that's 100-200MB in size that's created by Windows 7, the primary system partition, and the recovery partition. The small partition acts as kind of a sandbox for certain Win7 system files.
     
    H.A.L. 9000, Oct 22, 2010
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  6. anseio

    anseio All ways are my ways.

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    Man, don't mess w/ the MBR partition. You get... well... the mess you just had to clean up. :p
     
    anseio, Oct 22, 2010
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