Bricked my win7 install? Or can I save it?

Devrij · 12 Jul 2012 at 20:16

Had my gf's netbook dual booting win7 starter and 8CP, and she wants to give it to her mum. So I started formatting the win8 partition, to leave her 7 install and applications in tact. Should have been fine, but it BSOD halfway through. Win8 has its own little dual boot window, which insists on repairing win8 rather than letting me into 7 to complete the format and remove 8 completely. Obviously it can't repair the installation because it was halfway through wiping the partition.

My question is: is there a way to get into 7 (starter) to fix it? If not, presumably I can get starter onto a usb stick to reinstall (last resort)?

Hagar · 12 Jul 2012 at 20:31

What make of netbook? I have win 7 starter on a USB from HP/Compaq. I bought the netbook secondhand and without the recovery media. Sob story to HP and they initially wanted to charge me £33 but eventually they sent it to me. It was in warranty though.

Sounds like it needs a reinstall. Is there a shortcut at boot to the recovery partition?

Devrij · 12 Jul 2012 at 21:04

I tried the recovery partition, but it locks up after hunting for the recovery path. It's a packard bell. I'm just editing the cfg file on my ultimate disk so I can install starter via usb (apparently the disk contains all versions and deleting this cfg file prompts it to ask which version to install) . Ball-ache though as I will have to install drivers etc, which thankfully are all on the PB site.

Devrij · 12 Jul 2012 at 21:48

UPDATE! Using a usb installer, I can now get at the partitions to at least format them. However, after formatting the win8 partition, I'm still have the automatic repair issue. So I'm guessing it changed the system reserved partition to say "Win8 is on here". Now, what do I do about that? If I delete it the whole thing will be broken presumably (as opposed to being recreated)?

Devrij · 12 Jul 2012 at 22:14

Sorted, installed another win7 starter on top of the now formatted win 8 partition, which overwrote the system file. So then I could select the old install and format the latest win 7 partition. What a ballache.