I have a Dell XPS 8700, Windows 7 Professional SP1, bought in August, 2013. It came with a 2TB hard drive formatted GPT. I added a 512GB hard drive, and a 256GB SSD (in an adapter kit, so that it occupies the third hard drive slot).
I was trying to install another operating system. The installer didn't like the 2TB hard drive (it doesn't understand GPT), and offered to "fix" it for me. I tried NOT to let it "fix" the drive, but when I tried to boot Win 7 again, I found the system would not boot. A disk utility I use, DFSee, originally saw the 2TB drive as GPT; now it sees it as MBR. All of the partitions, free space, names, and sizes look OK as DFSee lists them.
The screen says:
Windows Boot Manager
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings, then click "Next".
3. Click "Repair your computer."
If you do not have this disc, ....
Status: 0xc000000e
Info: The boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.
I've read that GPT formatted drives have a backup copy of the GUID tables. So it would seem that recovery should be possible. I've looked for tools which might help. I downloaded a tool called Lazesoft Recovery Suite, and burned a bootable CD, but I haven't tried to use it yet. I found reference to Diskpart, but there are warnings about using it, and I don't yet know whether it could help in my case.
I do have a Dell "Reinstallation DVD for Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-Bit", but that disc did not seem able to help me with my problem when I attempted to follow the directions above.
It is my objective to reinstall Win 7 Pro on the SSD.
Does anyone have a solution for my problem?
Thanks,
Colin Campbell