@MrMagic Your advice is good but not feasible in this case - OP will lose his/her data. @oldsh_t Not possible; there's no utility to decrypt an encrypted partition by VeraCrypt.
The OP could try getting a second hard drive, installing windows on that drive with Vera Crypt and then connecting the original hard drive that can not boot and use Vera Crypt to de-crypt the files so they can be recovered
short of the rescue disk you have already used, I can't think of a way to get your data back. It would literally take 10's of thousands of years (at best) to "maybe" decrypt.
Wouldn't installing Windows on D: right now be the same? But I am afraid that VeraCrypt wouldn't recognize C: either, if all the Boot CDs don't. What do you think? The rescue disk is here and working but somehow my laptop doesn't want to boot from it
Hi Yen, thanks for your answer. The two Rescue Disks were of course created by the VeraCrypt on my current laptop, which I want to recover. The first one was created when I encrypted the SSD for the first time and the scond Rescue Disk was made, when I updated VeraCrypt to version 1.0f-2. Thus, the Disks hold the unique information of my system/volumes.
OK, now it makes sense. So your partition layout is: C:\ system encrypted with your data you want to recover. And D:\ unencrypted. One physical SSD only? Can’t you enter any repair options by booting with the disk? Can you enter the PW?
Thanks for that explanation Yen. Without the rescue disk, you won't be able to recover your data. Please post the brand name and model number of your pc so we can see what can be done to get the pc to boot from the rescue disk. Do you have more than one drive? If you had both drives connected when you installed Windows 7, then it's highly possible that your bootloader might be on the D: drive
Well, if OP cannot use rescue options, then I think the only chance is to try to complete to restore windows own bootdata. You have applied bootrec /fixmbr bootrec /fixboot fixmbr does not overwrite the partition table hence D is still alive. C should be also The process might not be completed yet. What does bootrec /ScanOs Finally bootrec /RebuildBcd would allow you to add the windows installation. These are the complete steps I know. bcdboot C:\windows sets manually a new entry, also bcdedit might get some info. I guess a reasonable step is to inform yourself how to completely restore it. But I am not sure if the encrypted partition will be recognized as windows system.... For some reasons the rescue disk does not work properly on the affected laptop while it works on another. And it has been created on the system to be recovered it should hold all data needed. So I guess current state of the SSD to be recovered has to be 'fixed'...so the rescue disk might work then.
It's an Asus Zenbook UX31E with a Sandisk U100 256GB SSD. It came pre-installed with Windows 7 Home, so I guess the bootloader is on C: I'm afraid I'm not that experienced with cmd commands and after this message from Veracrypt's makers: I think I'll try to connect the 2,5' SSD do another PC and see if can save some data from C: But since my Zenbook has its own proper SSD connector (18 Pin) I have to wait for an adapter to arrive to be able to connect it. I will post my results afterwards.
That is a good idea since Veracrypt has a mount feature. Anyway the answer from the Veracrypt makers is unsatisfying. There is no reason why their rescue disk should not work on your Laptop anymore....and no reason to assume a hardware issue I guess TuneUp Utilities 2014 screwed your windows and with the 2 bootrec commands you've deleted their bootloader. If veracrypt can access the partition tables it should be able to mount C:\
To be honest my SSD has always been very slow since I bought my laptop but I assumed it was due to the slower Sandisk SSD, which was reported in different forums. In recent weeks working almost became unusable taking ages for the simplest actions like installations of small programs. I think that there was some combination of damaged sectors and TuneUp utilities deleting some files that resulted in the current situation.
Actually a SSD doesn't become slower since the access times and NAND r/w remain the same. It depends on how 'garbage collect' or the older T.R.I.M. works. (If available and enabled at all) If people do use too much space of the SSD it can become an issue at write speed. I'd leave minimum 20% of free space @system... I have installed my w7 when it was available on MDL since then no new installation. It still runs as fast as at the first day. I personally can not recommend to use such tuning tools. Depending on what you do some tasks can be critical especially on an encrypted device. Since you wrote you could not boot anymore right after using tune up it is obvious that it damaged your installation.