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i had installed Windows 7 in my laptop and tried to install ubuntu recently. This attempt damaged OS windows 7 and unable to boot up. I have tried to repair with Win7 DVD and failed. Again I have tried to install Windows 7 with DVD, found no separate partition (earlier there were 3 nos of partition) in hard disk. Expecting all data remains in HDD. I would like to install Win 7 without deleting existing data. Kindly help me to install OS without formatting / loosing the data.

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  • You can't. The best course of action is to use a HDD docking station with another PC, backup the data, then install Windows.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 10, 2016 at 10:06

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Ok, so. I have a little bit of bad news for you. If Windows 7 isn't recognizing the partitions, you're going to have to wipe your drive and start from scratch. This has probably been caused by your attempted repair of the MBR on which Windows (and Linux [Ubuntu]) records their partition details.

If you have damaged the MBR and no OS can read it, nor can any OS recover it by using the MBR backups, you only have 2 options.

  1. Wipe and start again
  2. Use a data recovery software and let it seek out what it thinks could be partitions, backup the important data and reinstall, wiping your disk in the process. The software that you use to recover the data/partitions is left to you.

Neither option is easy if you have important data on the drive. Something to take away from this is something someone once told me, quoted below.

There are two kinds of people. The kind that make regular backups, and the kind who have never had a hard drive fail.

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In addition to TD.512's answer:

Use any live linux and try to recover the partition table or fix corrupted MBR.

You can look at testdisk or tons of other software also available

Click here and here to learn how to create and use live linux USB

Most likely it will fix the partition table. If not, you need to backup data and start again.

Testdisk also can backup data if you use live linux. check this link to know how. There are also live programs only to backup your hard drive.

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    Can you please include all relevant information in the answer itself.
    – Ramhound
    Jan 10, 2016 at 10:58

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