a Partition Disappeared From Sight

Lode

Member
After installing Zorin 9 on my Windows 8 laptop I also installed EasyBCD. But I made some mistakes and had to reformat, and even after that I now only see Local Disk (C:smile: 222 BG free of 251 GB. That is about half of what i saw there before I began my disaster course. The total space on my hard disk is about twice that much.

Is there a way to fix this? I don't see the partition Zorin made for itself.

Any help would be appreciated.

---------- Post added at 04:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:21 AM ----------

The situation has changed in the mean time as I tried different things to get Zorin back.


Now both Windows 8 and Zorin 9 appear as icons at boot up (looking good in that light blue field) but if I click on Zorin this appears on a black screen:


File: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mrb

Status: 0x000007b


When I choose Windows that's what I get.


"Tumbling Toddler" indeed. Excuses for double thread, was not intended.
 
I looks like there is no fix available... or the above post has not been here long enough.

Can EasyBCD also be used to delete the partition Zorin made? Leaving the Windows 8 partition intact, as well as D: which has the factory image for recovery on it?

If so, I could try to re-install Zorin afresh, hopefully without error this time making use of EasyBCD.

Also, if that can be done, what else would I have to do to make the dual boot option Windows 8/Zorin 9 work. Any different Bios settings for example?

I'm not a pc nerd, so please bear with me.

---------- Post added at 07:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 PM ----------

Good news for me:

I had surfed around to find a way to disable the annoying Lock- and the Log In Screens in Windows 8 but none of the tutorials I saw worked. Then I read this one right on this forum:

"Windows 8 boot problems ? Please read this before posting"
Windows 8 boot problems ? Please read this before posting

Besides removing the tick from "turn on fast startup" I also saw "Change what closing the lid does" and there unticked Lock Screen and Log In.

And one more goody (to me)... I also found a helpful video tutorial -in English- by Microsoft: How to Remove a Partition. Through that I discovered that I have one partition only with Windows 8 and D: on it.
Een hardeschijfpartitie verwijderen - Windows Help

After that I called up EasyBCD and saw that Zorin 9 was mentioned in it, so I used the BCD Backup/Repair function to remove it. Luckily at the end of that process I saw the warning that I had to add at least one OS or otherwise my pc would not reboot. So I added Windows 8. The previous time I did not know one needs a bit of patience to let EasyBCD do it's thing, and instead of waiting long enough I tapped on "View Settings" after 10-15 seconds That gave the error message "Program not responding" of and on, and not knowing that it would return to normal if I waited long enough (I found that out with the this time successful operation done just before posting this here) I rebooted my laptop. That's when the trouble began 3 days ago... :shame:

Never a dull moment. :grinning:

So it looks like I can try again to install Zorin 9.

---------- Post added at 11:32 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 PM ----------

Never a dull moment indeed... I had not rebooted yet after making those changes with EasyBCD when I posted the above and a link to this thread on the Zorin forum. (A very dedicated and helpful soul there had given me a link on that forum to a tutorial he had written in which EasyBCD was implemented.)

After logging off here and Zorin's forum I rebooted and got the black screen again with another error message, and the instruction to insert a Windows recovery disk. I again tried different boot settings in the BIOS, but no dice. And trying to have HP use recovery from D: gave an HP error message. Luckily yesterday I installed recovery on a usb flash drive, and that worked.

I'm sure EasyBCD works excellently, and Zorin too. But they are obviously not for tumbling toddlers like undersigned. They require a more advanced user, someone for whom this is a hobby or work.

Good luck and best wishes to you all.

<3
 
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