noob in distress trying to restore Win7 messed up hard drive’s partitions

[fiete]

(Sorry, my first try to post this was not successful, my message did not seem to show up, and is now labeled invalid after I had tried to post links. I hope I’m allowed to give it another try. Would the moderators be so kind as to delete my first post?)

Hello guys, I’m new here. It seems I’ve messed up my Samsung 530 laptop when trying to create an extra partition in order to set up a dual boot system. A google search led me to this forum.

Problem description:
I used Windows 7’s disk management module to shrink my boot partition (C) because I needed an extra partition (which I would give the drive letter X) for a secondary OS (Windows XP). I already had a secondary partition which I used to store data (D). Somewhere something must have gone wrong; I ended up with two spaces that were unallocated. I don’t know how to undo this, so after making these logical partitions, I extended C and D. I then decided to restore the laptop to its factory settings, but did not succeed. I first tried to do so (with Windows 7 home premium loaded) by using Samsung’s recovery system. It was the error message “Windows cannot find ‘x:WinClonManager1.exe” that led me to this thread. I asssumed I had to put the hdd in its original state again, so I made sure there was one partition only (C), apart from the ‘hidden’ partition that contains the recovery area.

I then tried using a bootable USB stick containing SRS 4.
This program gave the following error: “Can’t find recovery file”, “Can’t get 3rd/4th partition drive letter”, “Cannot check OS information”.
=>so the program thinks there are still 4 partitions, while I believed I had made sure there was only one again…
I pushed the button “MBR fix’. The problem persisted.

When I booted from the GParted live cd, this is what I got initially:

/dev/sda1 ….. system…… 992.50 kb ……diag
/dev/sda2 ……. 15 GB ….. boot, diag
/dev/sda3 …… 100 Mb
/dev/sda4 …… 282.99 GB
unallocated 2.34 Mb

Now it looks like this:
(sorry, I had screenshots ready)

sda2 recovery 15Gb diag
sda1 boot diag

I thought managing the flags would solve my problem, so I unflagged ‘boot’ with the sda2, and flagged ‘boot’ with sda1. After a reboot, I saw the ‘bootmgr is missing’.

I then tried step 3 of the manual found in this thread: Part 3: “How to export the image of the initial full backup content in the hidden partition Recovery?”
When browsing for the recovery files I noticed that:
C = local disk
D = system
E = cd-drive
X = boot (contains folders with data such as program files, users, windows !?)
Z = recovery

I see the files ‘int.wcl’ and ‘winclon.wcl’, I hope that’s a good sign. As far as the diagnosis result is concerned, I remember having read that my “windows partition seems to be corrupted” and that “it is possible that windows installed on the recovery area.” I want to stress that I never installed any extra operating system when I created the X: partition.

This is what I get in SRS 4 now:

recovery area found
factory os: windows 7
user os: cannot check information

error in partition information
1 partition, drive ?, bootable
2 partition, drive Z, not bootable
3 partition, drive ?, not bootable
4 partition, drive ?, not bootable

Installed OS version is different.

When I hit the ‘CMD’ button I see:

x:sourcesrecoverytoolsWinclon>

Oh boy. I should never have messed with Gparted, or partitions for that matter.

Hope you guys can help out a complete noob… All help’s appreciated.

cheers from Belgium
fiete

[SammyNetbook]

yikes, not sure which to leave as the other has the pics and links! Sorry we have had some spammers so I’m trying a few ways to limit their annoying messages. Might need to tinker a little to get the balance right.

http://www.sammymobile.com/forum/threads/14088-N220-3G-Connectivity…..is-it-urban-myth

[Author]

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