Messed up recovery partitions.

I just bought a Dell Inspiron 3537 laptop - i5, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB HDD, 1 GB Gfx card, Win 8 pre-installed.

When I saw that there is only one single 450 GB partition - C:\, I decided to split it. I used an older version of Easeus Partition Master and resized the C:\ partition to 100 GBs, the rest became unallocated space. Easeus asked for a reboot, so I rebooted, and then Windows just wouldn't start. I've spent the better part of the day trying to fix this; I got help from here:

[Urgent] Win 8 doesn't boot - winload.efi error - Easeus Partition Manager - Laptops - Windows 8

I'm posting two pics of my hard disk, one before resizing the partition using Easeus, and the other after having resized it. Before:



And after:



As you can see, the 13.27 GB PBR Image partition is lost, it has probably ended up in the unallocated space, which means Recovery won't work.

[01] Is there any way to make my laptop go back to the state in which it was before I resized the partition. Don't say buy the recovery disks from Dell; any other way, if there's one.

[02] Any way to recover the data from the unallocated space? What does the PBR Image contain, an ISO?

[03] If no Recovery is never going to work, do I need all those separate partitions now? What if I just format the whole hard disk and reinstall Win 8 afresh? My laptop didn't come with a Win 8 DVD, but I've got one from my friend.

[03] I've backed up my license using Advanced Tokens Manager. After formatting and reinstalling, will restoring the license using Advanced Tokens Manager work?

Please help.

BhargavJ said:

What if I just format the whole hard disk and reinstall Win 8 afresh? My laptop didn't come with a Win 8 DVD, but I've got one from my friend.

Click to expand...

Take a look at this post: How to clean install Windows 8.1 if you have an OEM computer with UEFI firmware (BIOS) embedded Windows 8/8.1 product key?

And if you want to shrink the C: partition, you should use the Windows Disk Management (see screenshot below).

The install key is embedded in the BIOS so when you install from DVD it will pick it up from there. You should not have to enter a key.

Thanks for the replies. I need help, though.

I have a Win 8 x64 Single Language edition pre-installed OEM computer with UEFI firmware (BIOS). Right-clicking on Computer - Properties shows "Windows 8 Single Language". Running winver in command prompt shows "Windows 8 Version 6.2 (Build 9200). But is it Core or Professional?

I probably have the en-us version, though Control Panel - Clock, Language, and Region - Language shows my language as "English (India)", maybe because I changed the time zone to India's? But I'll stick with en-us.

I looked at the link genet has given. On that page, there is a link for those who have single language versions:

http://www.eightforums.com/installa...-installation-w-windows-8-key.html#post410065

This directs me to the mydigitallife page. Here, there are a lot of links for the version (x64 en-us) I'm looking for. The "Master Link (thanks to GezoeSloog)" directs me to the cloud.mail.ru site, which has these links:



Sorry, it didn't allow copy-paste.

Below this, on the mydigitallife main page, there's "Special Contribution by murphy78: IR4 en-US collection torrent" part; the torrent contains the following x64 files:

9600.17053.winblue_refresh.140923-1144_x64fre_client_coren_en-us-ir4_ccrna_x64frer_en-us_esd_8808c8e51dd888ec91eca0b2df832e52cc7a22f5.esd

9600.17053.winblue_refresh.140923-1144_x64fre_client_coresinglelanguage_en-us-ir4_csla_x64frer_en-us_esd_ab9313b305f5b0ecace0596ec245cee709e584ae.esd

9600.17053.winblue_refresh.140923-1144_x64fre_client_core_en-us-ir4_ccra_x64frer_en-us_esd_e9e190248098e09a62b1bbf86927e65778f158de.esd

9600.17053.winblue_refresh.140923-1144_x64fre_client_professionaln_en-us-ir4_cprna_x64frer_en-us_esd_c7cfc2b0425a7bf073c3a58cec6af1a409dc31c0.esd

9600.17053.winblue_refresh.140923-1144_x64fre_client_professionalwmc_en-us-ir4_cpwmca_x64frer_en-us_esd_dbad5fcac8fbefef08c6344aaa37c174db8ab921.esd

9600.17053.winblue_refresh.140923-1144_x64fre_client_professional_en-us-ir4_cpra_x64frer_en-us_esd_e439d943e32ee1499ecc57194af3bf7a28ef00e2.esd

Below that, there's "Windows 8.1 Single Language ## Click Here for Links", which opens pastebin, which gives three sites to download the file:

ir4_csla_x64frer_en-us_esd_ab9313b305f5b0ecace0596ec245cee709e584ae.esd

I think I'm supposed to download the "_en-us_esd_ab931...", but I'd like to confirm it. Its 2.5 GBs, after all.

edit:

Download Windows 8.1 Single Language version (see this link for help).

The person who posted on the digitallife forum has also replied the same - using the ab931... one. I'm going to download the .esd using the torrent link.

I've already copied the license key, and also backed up using Advanced Tokens Manager, but I also plan to make a ghost image using DriveImageXML. The problem with DriveImageXML is that it can only be run after the computer has booted up and the OS is running, and then you can copy the ghost image to another partition. There is a way to create a LiveCD using BartPE, but I've misplaced the CD I had created a long time ago, and if I remember correctly, BartPE uses XP, and I don't think I've got a setup of XP with me at present. If you know about any other software that creates a ghost image and can be started from a LiveCD in case of non-booting OS, please do tell. That way, if my Win 8.1 installation runs into a problem, I can always boot from a LiveCD and copy back the ghost image.

It'll take some time downloading and installing Windows, so I won't post for a while.

Thanks for all the help you've given.

Edit: I just came to know about this thing called Anarethos Recovery Tool.

I tried downloading the Win 8.1 Single Language, first through the torrent, but I didn't get enough speeds, and then through the direct filesupload link, but I can't download in one single session, so I downloaded a part of it yesterday, and I started it again today, even though the router had been switched off and then restarted and the IP had changed, and yet filesupload allowed the download to resume. But I think they have a policy or something, to keep a download link open for 24 hours or so, and it probably expired somewhere around 11 AM today, so my download stopped, with 2 GBs of the 2.5 GBs downloaded, and no way to resume. I tried resuming it by changing the path in Internet Download Manager, but nothing worked. I'm not giving up downloading through the torrent, but that will take time, maybe a really long time.

This is why I want to ask something else. Is it possible to turn Windows 8 / 8.1 (not single language, the general one, which probably contains all languages) into Windows 8 / 8.1 single language? I have an ISO for Win 8 downloaded a long time earlier.

Also, suppose I cannot get the Win 8.1 Single Language ISO for whatever reason, and choose to do nothing but let the present installation remain as it is, can I get Win 8.1 through the Microsoft site? My current version is Win 8 Single Language (en-us) x64 OEM. I've already saved the license key.

Another thing: I'm attaching a screenshot of my hard disk at the present state: one is the Win 8 partition, another is the unallocated 363.11 GBs partition which I had made earlier but I haven't formatted it as NTFS yet.



My question is, since I've already messed up the recovery partitions, can I add the first three partitions (500 MBs, 40 MBs, and 2 GB) to the partition C: which contains Win 8?

Thanks for all the help you've given.

Edit:

I quick formatted the big 363.11 GBs partition as NTFS. Then I used GetDataBack for NTFS to scan that partition. It first shows:



For the three partitions, it shows the same kind of data:







The reason I'm doing this is I'm still hopeful of getting the factory ISO or whatever out of the recovery partition that I destroyed. But these images don't show any such data, do they? Any other software I can use to get the recovery ISO data from the recovery partition I destroyed?

BhargavJ said:

Is it possible to turn Windows 8 / 8.1 (not single language, the general one, which probably contains all languages) into Windows 8 / 8.1 single language?

Click to expand...

No.

BhargavJ said:

can I get Win 8.1 through the Microsoft site? My current version is Win 8 Single Language (en-us) x64 OEM.

Click to expand...

edit: YES.

Download Windows 8.1 Single Language version (see this link for help).