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My girlfriend's Windows 7 netbook had a partition with the letter V. I don't know where it came from no what it is. It contained a couple of files including command.com which is from pre Windows XP I think so I'm not sure why it was there. A toy that my daughter has requires that it be mounted as drive V: so I renamed this mysterious drive V: to W: After a reboot I now get:

Disk Error 

Press any key to restart

I booted UBCD4Win from a USB stick and ran FixMBR (I backed up the original MBR first.) This had no effect. I think that what might have happened is that the small partition that you get at the beginning of the disk in Windows 7 somehow acquired a drive letter and me changing it broke Windows ability to boot somehow.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

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  • I this might be more suitable for SuperUser? Oct 22, 2011 at 16:58
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    Try to restore the system through windows 7 disk. May this will give you back your system.
    – avirk
    Oct 22, 2011 at 17:18

3 Answers 3

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I find it hard to think that changing a drive letter will do this, this the drive letter is independent of the drive's ability to boot for the most part.

You'll want to gather more information about the partitions on this netbook. I'm surprised to see a command.com lying around on its own partition on a Windows 7 installation as this isn't the default behavior.

Probably best to first find out what exactly is in that partition in the first place before we go around suggesting solutions as it clearly isn't a typical installation of Windows.

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  • Windows NT series never used some command.com, the prompt is called cmd.exe here! command.com is only found on DOS powered systems.
    – Jens Erat
    Oct 23, 2011 at 15:34
  • @Ranon: Check the previous edit. He had mentioned a command.com which I felt was odd.
    – surfasb
    Oct 23, 2011 at 18:23
  • Sure, I just wanted to add a reason why this is odd. :)
    – Jens Erat
    Oct 23, 2011 at 18:25
  • @Ranon: Ah. Touche
    – surfasb
    Oct 23, 2011 at 18:26
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Use some Windows 7 DVD (not UBCD which wasn't even fitted for Vista I think!) to restore your boot manager. You can use the automatic boot repair which usually works quite fine, or use bootrec (which substitutes fixmbr since windows vista) to repair your boot records.

Possibly your MBR or boot loader was on the data position and got corrupted somehow while changing the drive letter.

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If you can find/make a boot disk with Diskpart utility on it, you can try renaming the drive letters to their original setup. You can google the Diskpart syntax, as well as instructions on how to make your diskpart boot disk. Having run fixmbr, however, and failing, your chances of getting your computer to boot up are slim. To minimize your losses, your best bet is to remove your drive, add a new hard disk to the netbook, and do a fresh OS install. After that, attach the old hard drive via USB, and pull all the data off it.

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