Please help. I have to repair a Windows 10 home computer that can't find the boot partition for some reason. The computer has both UEFI and legacy boot options. Right now I'm downloading a copy of the Windows 10 Eng 64 bit multiple editions ISO. I want to boot from USB and attempt to do a repair install but is their a better option? I tried to use an Easy2Boot flash drive loaded with the latest Macrium Reflect rescue ISO changed to a imgPTN extension to run a boot repair but all I got was a spinning progress circle followed by a blank screen.
What was the pc on originally ? UEFI or MBR ? You could try this if you have multiple hard disks... Sometimes, the boot order gets mixed up... If the PC was booting on UEFI, leave it at UEFI... Get into the BIOS and choose the Boot options... Under Hard Disk boot order, make sure the correct hard disk is listed and disable the others... Reboot and check... Instead of Macrium, I would use the Windows install iso... Convert to imgPTN, boot the easy2boot drive and select repair at the install window...
What do you mean changed the extension ? The iso has to be converted to imgPTN using some tools... I hope you know what you are doing
I used the MPI toolkit to create the imgPTN Macrium rescue image. At the time I didn't have the Windows 10 ISO. The Macrium rescue image has a selectable boot repair utility for different Windows versions. I just tried a Windows 10 ISO with Rufus but it didn't work. Tomorrow I'll try E2B with Windows 10 imgPTN.
Can't help with the "didn't work" diagnosis... We need more detail... Did it detect the Windows installation ? What was the final message ? Did it say Startup repair couldn't fix the issue ?
Thanks for the replies but the problem is hardware related. I USB booted to Windows 10 install media which revealed an inaccessible hard drive. The computer is a brand new Toshiba C55D-C5271 purchased at Office Depot by a friend of my mother. It's going back to Office Depot.
smells like toshiba custom recovery partition.. the toshibas vista restore key was holding 0 while power up.. then it changed. try booting a live linux or gparted live and see.
Thanks for the reply. I will boot to GParted and take a look but Parted Magic couldn't find the device. I need to rectify my lack knowledge and experience re UEFI and GPT partitions. I run Windows 7 on an old computer. The old woman who owns the Toshiba is worried about losing her personal files. She didn't have a backup. Today imaged my boot SSD then tried to boot my computer with her drive attached via USB3 docking station. My computer would not boot with her drive attached. With her drive removed, my computer booted to a repair mode so I restored from the image file I made earlier. I think that drive is kaput but I going to put it back in the Toshiba and boot to Gparted and take a look.
I don't have native USB3, My docking station is connected to a PCIe card that lacks a boot ROM. I've read a bit more and edited the post above. It seems that my Windows 7 computer will read and write to a good GPT drive.
I'd try booting from the Debian partition on a Hiren's rescue USB, boot GParted, see if the recovery partitions still there and active (unhide it first). If so, mount the recovery image and flash it to a bootable thumb drive. Boot from that, and run the Toshiba recovery utility.