win 7 has disappeared!

Hello all,

I installed Zorin 9 on a Lenovo G780 I use rarely. Installation went without a hitch. Some weeks after installation (I only used the computer a few times) I was telling my friend (who told me about Zorin) about how smoothly the installation went and how much I liked Zorin. While I was telling him I realized I had no recollection of being asked about any dual boot options as Ubuntu does. I also realized I had no recollection of ever being asked which OS I wanted to use when I booted up the laptop.

Perplexed, when I got home I booted up the laptop and sure enough it booted straight into Zorin. I could find no trace of win 7.

I asked my friend at work what my options were. He runs tech support at a local college and uses Zorin at home. He told me that it was unlikely that Zorin overwrote the whole disk on installation and that my files were most likely intact, just hidden.

The thing is, I'm quite sure I did NOT make a selection to have Zorin be the sole operating system on the computer. The HD is quite large, 500 GB if I recall correctly and is maybe 1/4 full, at most.

I can get another copy of Win 7 so that's not a concern. I just need access to the files (docs & pics).

Any ideas as to the best way to go about this? Thanks in advance for your help.

If Win7 is intact you should be able to view the partition on which Windows is on in Computer, like this:



Keep us posted!

Normally Zorin does show "do you want to install alongside [name of OS or 'other operating system']

For future reference, install like this:

https://vimeo.com/110085401

Hello all and thanks for your replies.

I've taken a bunch of screenshots with intent to post them here, but I keep getting "413 Request Entity Too Large". I'm a bit perplexed......

Thanks,

Jim

Hi, I suspect your screenshots are in .png format.

Try taking one of the selected window (Gparted) and ensure that you don't have any other active windows open when taking screenshot of window - then open the saved screenshot and save as a .jpg file - just rename the file in Picture Viewer that comes with Zorin.

Sometimes the browser can cause an issue - I was only able to upload a screenshot in Firefox using Windows not on Zorin - try installing Opera from the Browser Chooser Manager - Opera works every time.

Hello all,

Thanks for the advice. Here are the first five screenshots in .jpg format.

Second 5:

Here's the last one.

Actually, I've been using Opera since the mid '90's when it was $38.00 to purchase and I got a 50% discount because I was a grad student. It's still my favorite and I have 12.16 Final on all my laptops. For what I needed it was by far the fastest and most intuitive. And yes, I'm one of those people who still thinks that dumping Presto will eventually turn out to be a mistake. Sorry, I'm digressing.
---------------

I hope the screenshots reveal something to you guys. I didn't see anything labelled "Win", but I know that by itself that doesn't mean anything.

I can replace both OS's, if need be. I'm not concerned about that. I just need to get my files, 90% of which are in common document and pic formats. I don't know if this is relevant, but once I get all recoverable files copied to an external HD, I'll wipe the entire disk, do a fresh install of Win7 if need be, and sell the laptop.

Thanks in advance for your help.

OK, I regret to inform you that I cannot find any indication that Windows is still on your machine!

Provided you have not been saving or making any changes to your Zorin install, there is supposed to be a way of using your Zorin Live disc and using the Disk analyzer (Memory Diagnostic?) - please wait for madvinegar or someone else who knows how to do this.

Thank you for your reply. I hope one of the guru's here can advise. I've searched the web high and low and have found nothing that seems to address this situation.

I do have another question which I hope will be simpler. According to this screenshot, just 6.8GB of the 750GB disk are being used. There's a notation that "some files are unreadable" . The laptop was less than a year old when I inherited it. For some reason I seem to recall it was maybe 10-15% full, but I'm really not sure as I had no reason to pay attention at the time.

1. Would ALL unreadable files (including my files and presumably Win7) on the disk be included in that 6.8GB, or would Zorin not see those files at all and read them as empty space?

2. Is there a way to copy ALL contents of the disk i.e. each and every file (regardless of whether or not Zorin "sees" it) onto and external hard drive so I can deal with it later? If so, where could I find that info?

Thanks,

Jim

Unreadable data can occur if Windows 7 did not shut down cleanly prior to installing Zorin - you may need to seek data recovery solutions - My best advice would be to get a caddy that can hold Notebook hard drives and place in a Windows machine, then download a demo of 'Get Databack NTFS' :

http://www.runtime.org/

Thanks for your reply. I guess I'll have to either sell the laptop without an HDD or buy a new one and put it in. It appears from the website I theoretically could do it all leaving the HDD in place, but it seems like that would be a lot more complicated. I think I
l'll just pull the drive.

Thanks, all for your help.

Try running this and posting the output =]

Code:

df -f; mount; sudo parted -l

This should show us all the drives and partitions the computer can see.

If you want to try to recover the data, try using testdisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Thanks Linx - that is what I could not remember - but could remember madvinegar posted somthing about Test Disk on here a while back!

Thanks! I'll check this out. I probably won't get a chance until Sunday, but I'll post everything once I've finished.

Thanks again.