I used a partition-management tool to merge my C: and D: partitions. I formatted the D: partition first, started the merge, and let the computer restart while the operation completed. Afterward, Windows would no longer launch, and I received an error saying that GPT header corruption had been detected. The affected drive is an SSD. What steps can I take to repair the partition and boot information, and is it possible to fix this without reinstalling Windows?
2 Answers
Create or use a Windows installation or recovery USB, then boot into its repair environment and open Command Prompt. From there, tools such as DiskPart or GPT fdisk can be used to inspect and potentially repair the GPT metadata and boot files. A repair may be possible without reinstalling Windows, but avoid writing changes to the disk until the partition layout and backups have been checked carefully.
A clean installation is the safest approach if you don’t know exactly what the partition merge changed. It will erase the system installation, so recover or back up any important files first if the data is still accessible. Since this is an SSD, the storage type itself doesn’t change the basic recovery process.
So there’s a chance I can restore the boot information without completely reinstalling Windows?