Win8 has deleted Win7

I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8
development preview. I booted into Win8 and it reported that it needed
repairs, and then set about doing them. When it finished I could only
boot into Win8, and soon found out that it had deleted the other
partitions on the hd.

I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week ago,
but I'd rather try getting the latest partitions back before I resort to
that.

Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?

Ed

"Ed Cryer" <> wrote in message news:j69sni$ga2$...
>I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8 development preview. I booted into Win8 and it
>reported that it needed repairs, and then set about doing them. When it finished I could only boot into Win8, and soon
>found out that it had deleted the other partitions on the hd.
>
> I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week ago, but I'd rather try getting the latest
> partitions back before I resort to that.
>
> Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?
>
> Ed

Man, that sucks, Ed!
I've never had to recover a lost partition other than when replacing a new drive, then restoring it from image. But
thanks for the heads up. I think I'll wait a bit before trying the Windows 8 preview. <Phew!>
--
SC Tom

"SC Tom" wrote in message news:j69t5u$j6r$...


"Ed Cryer" <> wrote in message
news:j69sni$ga2$...
>I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8
>development preview. I booted into Win8 and it reported that it needed
>repairs, and then set about doing them. When it finished I could only boot
>into Win8, and soon found out that it had deleted the other partitions on
>the hd.
>
> I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week ago,
> but I'd rather try getting the latest partitions back before I resort to
> that.
>
> Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?
>
> Ed

Man, that sucks, Ed!
I've never had to recover a lost partition other than when replacing a new
drive, then restoring it from image. But
thanks for the heads up. I think I'll wait a bit before trying the Windows 8
preview. <Phew!>

No one (You're a rare exception, SC Tom) seems to heed the MS warning not to
install
Developer Previews on anything other than a test system. They put it on
their only
computer - the one with all their data - and then blame MS when things go
wrong.

I installed it in Sun's VirtualBox so if it screws up (which it already
has - twice),
my Win 7 installation isn't affected.

I'm sure the beta (The Developers Preview is only alpha) will be more robust
and probably
include a full version of IE 10 rather than the Developer's Preview which
doesn't even
have menus or anything.

Tom L

On Sun, 2 Oct 2011 10:40:50 -0400, "SC Tom" <> wrote:

>
>"Ed Cryer" <> wrote in message news:j69sni$ga2$...
>>I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8 development preview. I booted into Win8 and it
>>reported that it needed repairs, and then set about doing them. When it finished I could only boot into Win8, and soon
>>found out that it had deleted the other partitions on the hd.
>>
>> I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week ago, but I'd rather try getting the latest
>> partitions back before I resort to that.
>>
>> Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?
>>
>> Ed
>
>Man, that sucks, Ed!
>I've never had to recover a lost partition other than when replacing a new drive, then restoring it from image. But
>thanks for the heads up. I think I'll wait a bit before trying the Windows 8 preview. <Phew!>


Remember the 1995 Microsoft Motto: "Windows ain't done 'til Lotus
won't run."

On 10/2/2011 10:05 AM, Kirk Bubul wrote:
>
>
<snip>


> Remember the 1995 Microsoft Motto: "Windows ain't done 'til Lotus
> won't run."

Your memory is flawed
http://www.proudlyserving.com/archiv...nt_done_t.html

Ed

It is there in plain black and white that installing the Win 8 preview can cause
this issue if not installed clean on a clean hard drive. Next time read the warning
that MS posted with the read me. Aside from the latter the Win 8 is a Preview
release which means that it is a quick assembly of the Alpha versions of Win 8 and
not a Beta.
At present Win 8 is in the Alpha 3 version which only the approved testers have at
this time. Again Ed, this Win 8 is a Preview version only. The Beta version will be
in the Beta 1 stage sometimes in the middle of Nov and only the approved Beta
testers will have the Beta 1 version. The public version will be available sometimes
in the first quarter of next year.
So to repeat again Ed. What happened to you with the Preview version is your own
fault and nobody else's. Next time read the complete print before installing an
Alpha in Preview for the public of Win 8 or any other software.

--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect


"Ed Cryer" <> wrote in message
news:j69sni$ga2$...
>I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8 development
>preview. I booted into Win8 and it reported that it needed repairs, and then set
>about doing them. When it finished I could only boot into Win8, and soon found out
>that it had deleted the other partitions on the hd.
>
> I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week ago, but I'd
> rather try getting the latest partitions back before I resort to that.
>
> Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?
>
> Ed

Well, now that you've ranted like a pompous oaf and got that off your
chest, maybe you can put your better self into gear and recommend to me
some good software to recover the partitions. I know they're still there
because I've run Easeus recovery prog and it sees them.

Ed



"Peter Foldes" <> wrote in message
news:j6acl5$3id$...
> Ed
>
> It is there in plain black and white that installing the Win 8 preview
> can cause this issue if not installed clean on a clean hard drive.
> Next time read the warning that MS posted with the read me. Aside from
> the latter the Win 8 is a Preview release which means that it is a
> quick assembly of the Alpha versions of Win 8 and not a Beta.
> At present Win 8 is in the Alpha 3 version which only the approved
> testers have at this time. Again Ed, this Win 8 is a Preview version
> only. The Beta version will be in the Beta 1 stage sometimes in the
> middle of Nov and only the approved Beta testers will have the Beta 1
> version. The public version will be available sometimes in the first
> quarter of next year.
> So to repeat again Ed. What happened to you with the Preview version
> is your own fault and nobody else's. Next time read the complete print
> before installing an Alpha in Preview for the public of Win 8 or any
> other software.
>
> --
> Peter
> Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
> Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> rights.
> http://www.microsoft.com/protect
>
>
> "Ed Cryer" <> wrote in message
> news:j69sni$ga2$...
>>I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8
>>development preview. I booted into Win8 and it reported that it needed
>>repairs, and then set about doing them. When it finished I could only
>>boot into Win8, and soon found out that it had deleted the other
>>partitions on the hd.
>>
>> I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week
>> ago, but I'd rather try getting the latest partitions back before I
>> resort to that.
>>
>> Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?
>>
>> Ed
>

Ed Cryer wrote:
> Well, now that you've ranted like a pompous oaf and got that off your
> chest, maybe you can put your better self into gear and recommend to me
> some good software to recover the partitions. I know they're still there
> because I've run Easeus recovery prog and it sees them.

Do you have any reason to believe the contents of the partition have
been touched? Or just that the partiton entry has been removed from the
table?


If the latter then gpart (short for guess partition, not gparted which
is a sort of PQ partition magic alike) has saved a friend's bacon, it
was a few years back, depends if you're confy with finding a live linux
distro that includes it?

Ed

Sorry to break you bubble. When Win 8 PREVIEW installed and you did not follow the
warnings that was in the Read Me section your partition is gone for good. It is gone
and you are not able to recover it. The Win8 Preview took care of that. Good luck
and next time please be more careful when installing any Preview package or even
some Beta but not all of them. Hopefully you had your important Data backed up.

BTW: I am not trying to be bad towards you but what I told you is the hard facts. As
for myself I always have a separate Hard Drive running as a slave to which I install
these type of programs . This way nothing on my main drive is ever touched


--
Peter
Please Reply to Newsgroup for the benefit of others
Requests for assistance by email can not and will not be acknowledged.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect


"Ed Cryer" <> wrote in message
news:j6aelo$6la$...
> Well, now that you've ranted like a pompous oaf and got that off your chest, maybe
> you can put your better self into gear and recommend to me some good software to
> recover the partitions. I know they're still there because I've run Easeus
> recovery prog and it sees them.
>
> Ed
>

Ed Cryer wrote:
> I had dual-boot on my computer until recently. Win7 and the Win8
> development preview. I booted into Win8 and it reported that it needed
> repairs, and then set about doing them. When it finished I could only
> boot into Win8, and soon found out that it had deleted the other
> partitions on the hd.
>
> I want them back ASAP. I have a backup of the whole hd from a week ago,
> but I'd rather try getting the latest partitions back before I resort to
> that.
>
> Does anybody have experience of recovering deleted partions?
>
> Ed

So you think it just wiped the MBR ?

You can try TestDisk. You could run it from a Linux LiveCD. Or
from Windows. You could try running it from a Windows 8 "cmd.exe"
command prompt window for example. (Just resize the command window
to meet the minimum x * y dimensions the program needs.) Like
most things in this posting, it'll likely need to "Run as Administrator"
in order to be able to access the disk.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

TestDisk is included on some of the Linux LiveCDs, so you don't
even need to download it.

The problem with TestDisk, is deciding whether the computed MBR, is
better than the situation you were in previously. If you have a backup,
then I suppose you have nothing to lose.

TestDisk can scan the disk from end to end. It can find "deleted" partitions,
as well as real ones. For example, at one time I had four partitions, removed
one and then had three. One day, while fooling around with a Win2K installer
CD, the MBR got wiped. I used TestDisk, and it proposed a four volume
partition table (which is wrong). I kept the information it detected about
three of the partitions, and used that info to set up the partition table
again.

If, at any time, the TestDisk interface results make you uncomfortable,
press <control>-c to stop execution, which works in Linux or Windows.

For comparison and forensic purposes, you can use the Linux "fdisk" to
look at the MBR and its four primary partition entries. You can try this
before running TestDisk.

sudo fdisk /dev/sda

I'm guessing the disk is called "sda". You can use this, to list devices
detected.

sudo ls /dev

Things like hda, hda1 or sda, sda1 etc. are disks. HDA by itself, is the
whole disk. When there is a number after it, that is for an individual
partition. For example, I have four primary partitions on my disk right
now, and in Linux it would be /dev/sda for the whole disk (suitable for the
fdisk command), and sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4 for the individual partitions.

When in fdisk, and pointed at /dev/sda, you press "p" to print the
current table. it's very similar in a way, to what you see in ptedit32,
only presented slightly differently. In terms of units of measure, the
Windows tools use 512 byte sectors, while Linux uses 1024 byte blocks.
Seeing a "+" after a number in Linux, means "and half a block more".

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/5544/disks.gif

*******

As for Windows 8, I've installed it on two machines.

Machine #1 - Windows 7 laptop
- Install VirtualBox
- Install Windows 8 in a virtual machine
Worked well right away. Graphics even seemed snappy.

Machine #2 - Ubuntu 10.10 desktop (separate drive with only Ubuntu on it)
- Install VirtualBox for Linux
- Install Windows 8 in a virtual machine
Crashed like a bastard, over and over again. Black screen
on most error cases. Eventually, dialing back the emulated
interfaces when setting up the VM, stopped that. Graphics in
this case, seemed to be slower, even though the computer has
4x the compute power, and a better graphics card. It seems the
weak DX 11 graphics in the laptop made a difference for some
reason.

So for hygiene reasons, I insulated Windows 8, and still got it running.
It's not as much fun as running on raw hardware, but a bit safer. There
is no desktop integration for example, so getting files in and out is
tougher.

Paul