Noob that eliminated his windows 7 partition (maybe). Need help.

[Phil]

Hi,

Dont give up, good learning opportunity.

testdisk and gparted are in synaptic (but of course)

Perhaps do a google search for testdisk to get some instructions, maybe a youtube video.

You can get Win7 isos to install but you need an activation/license key (bottom of machine?)
eg https://sites.google.com/site/linuxlablibrary/windows-iso

PS thinking a long way ahead check out clonezilla to save out disk images and partitions, saved me on many occasions.

[MyPCLinuxName]

If the partition has been deleted, it can be recreated and all the contents of the partition will be there PROVIDING that no new partitions have been created and WRITTEN to.

The tool to recover the partition table I suggest is

testdisk

It should be run from a liveCD/DVD or liveUSB.

It is run from a console session.

You might have to install it while running live or it might already be installed .....  cannot recall ATM.

The BIGGIE is to NOT write anything to the drive before attempting recovery.

Thats what I was afraid of. As I said, I created a swap and linux partition (about 25gb, I had plenty of room)....and after install I could not see an NTFS partition, but the space is still there (roughly 420 gb).

If the same space as previously occupied by the partition is there, then nothing that was in the partition will have been written over.

So, recovering the partition using testdisk or other tool should get things back to the way they were.

Well, that would be fantastic. Can't seem to locate testdisk though.

LOL...it always amazes me on tv shows where they find a fragment of a hard drive burned in a fire or a spy smashing the drive and they can recover all the lost data, and I can do one install and can't manage to log back in.....too funny.

[MyPCLinuxName]

Hi,

Dont give up, good learning opportunity.

testdisk and gparted are in synaptic (but of course)

Perhaps do a google search for testdisk to get some instructions, maybe a youtube video.

You can get Win7 isos to install but you need an activation/license key (bottom of machine?)
eg https://sites.google.com/site/linuxlablibrary/windows-iso

PS thinking a long way ahead check out clonezilla to save out disk images and partitions, saved me on many occasions.

Good info.

[Just17]

Where do I find testdisk?....or is it just run in console?

console

[MyPCLinuxName]

I was unable to use console as my user. I logged into root and it said my other partition was fat 32....I imagine that isn't good.
Also, following the website I found that supposedly did it step by step, was like reading Greek for me. I did a recommended MBR fix and my mbr read 1234F until I figured out how to reboot into the live cd and fixed the MBR (with MBR redo) by accident. I had no idea what I was looking at so I closed out the window in KText or whatever it opened it with , but asked me if I wanted to save before it closed (I hadn't done anything other than wonder what the crap it was showing me), so I saved and VOILA! MBR let me log back into PCLinuxOS......but still no Windows.