Question Can't boot into Hirens to recover deleted partition ?

[Deodedros]

Hello,

Here is the run down:

I was having issues trying to repair a Windows installation. Ran some common bootrec commands and at one point got an error that access was denied. Not sure how that is even remotely possible so followed guide to format efi partition. I then proceeded to clean the disk in diskpart, then naively shutdown the computer and walked away to clear my head on what my next steps were.

Since clean is just a low level format, I figured I could try to recover the partitions. In order to do so however I was trying to boot into Hirens in their PXE environtment. Though every time I boot into it I run into an error that its missing a file to boot into windows. I used rufus to burn the ISO to the flash drive, so not sure how its "missing" a file. Out of curiosity I decided to mount the ISO then just copy everything over. Still no luck. Here is the specific file path: \windows\system32\boot\winload.efi

What is everyone thinking I should do next cause Im at a loss.

https://imgur.com/a/E8I6x0a

 

[CodeConnoisseur]

Your Hiren install is probably just bad, try again. winload.efi is the Windows Boot Loader, but the Windows Boot Manager that you see giving the error is seemingly unable to find it. TestDisk by CGSecurity should help you recover deleted partitions though and it can be made into a live USB.

 

[TerryLaze]

Or it's trying to boot into the OS on the internal drive but that's formatted so of course it doesn't have the needed file.
Also I don't know if hirens is efi compatible, the older ones definitely weren't and this message is pretty common in that case.

Have you tried booting into windows recovery from a windows install media? You can put testdisk on that and try recovering the drive that way, or just take the disk out and connect it as a secondary disk on a working PC.

 

[Deodedros]

Your Hiren install is probably just bad, try again. winload.efi is the Windows Boot Loader, but the Windows Boot Manager that you see giving the error is seemingly unable to find it. TestDisk by CGSecurity should help you recover deleted partitions though and it can be made into a live USB.

Thats what my initial thought was so I used hirens on my own machine and it booted without the error in the picture. I did take out the m.2 ssd and isntalled it on my machine wand was able to recover the deleted partitions, however I completely lost the volume and files that were in the C: drive.

 

[Deodedros]

Or it's trying to boot into the OS on the internal drive but that's formatted so of course it doesn't have the needed file.
Also I don't know if hirens is efi compatible, the older ones definitely weren't and this message is pretty common in that case.

Have you tried booting into windows recovery from a windows install media? You can put testdisk on that and try recovering the drive that way, or just take the disk out and connect it as a secondary disk on a working PC.

Yea I was able to boot into Windows with a usb drive without any issue. In any case I took the drive out of the bad pc and installed it on my personal computer and used Test Disk to recover the partitions. Despite that I was not able to recover all the files that would have been in the C: volume

 

[Bob.B]

Thats what my initial thought was so I used hirens on my own machine and it booted without the error in the picture. I did take out the m.2 ssd and isntalled it on my machine wand was able to recover the deleted partitions, however I completely lost the volume and files that were in the C: drive.

Wonder if this has anything to do with trim and garbage collection.