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"invalid Partition Table" on startup

Anonymous
Apr 29, 2011, 2:32 AM

Original title: i am running windows 7 64 bit and getting the error "invalid Partition Table".  How can I fix this?

i am running windows 7 64 bit and getting the error "invalid Partition Table".  How can I fix this?

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  1. Anonymous
    Apr 25, 2013, 6:56 PM

    I had the same problem on a Dell Precision newish - M6500 that I had recently used an external USB HDD for doing a backup.

    The EXACT error text is "Invalid Partition Table!" - and I didn't have any option to press enter, as far as I know, but... hey, I was kinda freaking out a bit.  So if magically ENTER would have done something, I don't know.  But I powered off (Ctrl+Alt+Del also worked to reboot) then entered BIOS mode to perform the fix bellow.

    I fixed the problem as follows:

    Turned off the laptop

    Unplugged the External USB HDD (and all other USB devices probably not necessary, but didn't know at the time)

    Made sure ALL media bays (SD Card reader and DVD drive) were empty

    Went into the BIOS config on boot up, and configured the boot sequence to leave off everything except Internal HDD, and CD/DVD (so turned off the USB and secondary HDD from the boot sequence)

    Rebooted - and windows resumed without any error message.

    Needless to say, that was a HUGE relief.  These posts here are old, so probably the posters have already figured out a solution, or moved on - but in case someone else runs in to this problem, this solution was a non-destructive thing.  Before trying the windows startup repair, try this first... I have an SSD drive for Drive 0, a SATA for Drive 1, and have a Seagate 1.5TB external USB 3 HDD.

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  1. Anonymous
    Mar 12, 2012, 6:52 PM

    We've just run into this exact same problem with 2 brand new Dell systems with Win 7 Pro, 64 bit.  We've discovered that we got the "invalid partition table" error when an external, USB drive (Western Digital) was attached.

    We got a little different message about the NT kernel missing when a USB stick was installed.

    So...... The error message appears to be tied to the computer attempting to find what drive to boot from. How do we tell Win 7 which drive to boot from? Or maybe the answer is to tell the system to ignore certain drives??

    FYI...

    the exact message is: invalid parttion table

    System halts at error message. Desktop is not reached.

    These are brand new systems with nothing but MS updates done so far and both systems respond in exactly the same manner with the same error message.

    ~Joe

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  2. Anonymous
    Feb 13, 2013, 8:42 PM

    I am having a similar problem.  Brand new Dell Precision M4700.  We have 2 SSDs with Windows 7 installed on each one to dual boot.  One in the domain and one out of the domain.

    after the BIOS splash screen I get a black screen with "Invalid Partition Table"

    I hit any key and it goes to the Boot Manager.

    From the Boot Manager I can boot into either operating system normally.

    If I F8 I can get a recovery console if I am on the domain install but I get a 0xc000000e error if I am on the non-domain install.

    The domain install is on disk 0

    The system reserve and non-domain install are on disk 1

    I have tried the startup repair from recovery consol.

    I have tried all of the options of bootrec with no luck

    I have tried a chkdsk /r on all the volumes.

    DiskPart sees everything fine.

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  3. Anonymous
    Jun 13, 2013, 4:10 PM

    this worked great. thanks for the tip

    4 people found this answer helpful.
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