Windows 10: I accidentally deleted the partitions on a C: drive, restored them, but now it won't boot.

TLDR: title. Behold my disk manager screenshot pardon my french, where Disk 0 is my laptop's C: drive, which is normal, and Disk 2 is the patient. As you can see, the partitions are not the same.




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Details:


So i want to upgrade from my old 2.5 SSD to an M2 SSD; i plug them both into my computer to image the old to the new; i remember that i've used the new M2 before, so i open the default Windows drive manager to delete its partitions; and that's when i boneheadedly delete the partitions on my old 2.5 SSD instead.

Undeterred by my stupidity, i install Active Undelete to restore them; it works, all the partitions are back, the files are there, as far as i can tell my old 2.5 SSD is ready to work again. Install it into the computer to check, attempt to boot... And it doesn't work, it tries for a few seconds then sends me back to the BIOS screen. Clearly, deleting and restoring the partitions has broken something in Windows.

I then download Windows Media Creation Tool, install Windows on a thumb drive, and try to use the Recover function that it has, hoping that this will unfuck the OS. It doesn't, it just bluntly tells me that it has failed with no further explanation. There's a command prompt available, but i don't know how to use those. I have taken a few pictures of this with my phone.

Of course i could just install a fresh Windows, but i don't want to for reasons both practical re-install a lot of apps and settings that i've mostly forgotten and sentimental this has been my home since 2015, i don't wanna start fresh.

My goal is to get this old 2.5 SSD back to a bootable state so i can then image it to the new M2 SSD. Google and this forum hasn't been helpful mostly how to create restore points hence why i find myself before you.


Thank you for your help :

:)

 

Accidentally deleted Windows 10 boot partition. How do I restore it?

Hi,

I accidentally deleted my windows 10 boot partition during some maintenance activities on my computer. So, now I do not see the Windows option on my PC in the UEFI boot loader. I do have CentOS 7 installed on an external USB hard drive so I booted into that
and downloaded the Windows 10 ISO. I have created a bootable thumb drive using the ISO on CentOS using gparted.

So I booted using the thumb drive and chose the Windows 10 repair option but it did not help. I have 2 SSDs on my machine and I do not want to lose any of the data including the windows settings if I choose a fresh install option. My disk layout on Windows
was:

C:\ - Windows was installed here. This is a 1 TB SSD Drive.

D:\ - Second 1 TB SSD Drive.

When I'm on Linux, then I can see those drives as 2 separate devices and I can also access the files on them. The device that corresponds to the C:\ drive still seems to have all the Windows installation data. If I boot into the Windows 10 thumb drive and
select the fresh installation option then it lists all my partitions but I'm not sure which is which and I do not want to delete data by mistake. So, is there a way for me to fix the Windows efi records?

Would appreciate any help!

Thanks,

Sachin

 

Move System Restore Partition to different drive

In case it's helpful to anyone in future, I did resolve this, with a lot more effort than I had hoped to spend! The basic process was:

• Decrypt C: drive;
• Shrink C: partition by 500mb at beginning of drive;
• Copy System Restore Partition into unallocated space (I used MiniTool Partition Wizard for this). Mark it as active;
• Use EasyBCD to ensure it is set up to boot into the OS, and restart to test;
• Delete System Restore Partition on HDD, and expand the remaining partition to fill the unallocated space;
• Run Windows 10 installer from within Windows, 'upgrading' the OS, but keeping programs and files - this will repair the manually created System Restore Partition properly;
• Re-encrypt with Bitlocker.

Hope it's helpful! Long and the short of it is: try and think of these things before you start...

 

Accidentally deleted Windows 10 boot partition. How do I restore it?

Hi.

You can create a lost/deleted EFI partition by CMD.

1) Create an installation media

2) Boot PC with an installation media

3) Press SHFIT + F10 on the first screen to bring up Command Prompt

4) Run the following commands and click Enter each time at Command Prompt:

diskpart

list disk

select disk N (N refers to the disk which contains the deleted the EFI System partition)

list partition

create partition efi

format quick fs=fat32

list partition

list volume (find the volume letter which belongs to the installed Windows OS)

exit (exit diskpart)

bcdboot M:\windows (M refers to the volume letter of installed Windows OS)

(bcdboot m:\windows command will copy the boot files from Windows partition to the EFI system partition and create BCD store in the partition)

Next remove installation drive and restart your computer

Let me know if you have any questions