I've recently made some changes to my laptop's partition using GParted. Initially, I had a dual-boot setup with Zorin OS and Windows, but I decided to switch back to Windows entirely. This left me with some unallocated space next to my C drive. I moved the C drive to the left of this unallocated space to extend its size. However, now my Windows is refusing to boot and shows a stop code: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE (0x7B). I initially thought about reinstalling Windows since I don't have any critical files, but I ran into another issue. My laptop isn't recognizing the USB drive I bought to install Windows. It shows up in Diskpart but not in the boot manager or BIOS options. I've tried various recovery commands, but my SSD appears invalid. I'm reaching out for help to get my Windows back up and running or effectively reinstall it.
2 Answers
If you don't need to save any personal files, consider using GParted to create a new partition table in GPT format. This will erase everything, but it will take care of any misconfiguration from moving your partitions. Just let the Windows installation create the needed partitions automatically. If you do need to back up files, you'll need a USB external storage device and maybe boot into a Linux live session to recover them first.
Sounds like when you moved the C drive, the boot configuration wasn't updated to point to the new location of the Windows files. You can fix this by using the command prompt to repair the boot configuration. You'll want to use the `bcdedit` command to adjust the boot settings. If you can access the command prompt, you might want to start by running `bootrec /fixmbr` and `bootrec /fixboot` to see if that helps.
How do I run that command? I can access the CMD, but I'm not sure what to type.
I'm worried creating a new partition would mess up the unallocated space issue. Any advice on that before I proceed?