i made an upgrade from windows vista enterprise to Windows 7 enterprise, during the installation process i received an error message message that said that the setup cannot continue due to a corrupted file (i have downloaded the windows 7 iso file from http://technet.microsoft.com/fr-fr/windows/cc442495.aspx?ITPID=wtcfeed). I tried to reboot and select the option "Rollback" Windows 7 but i always received some error and i cant log into my new windows 7 installation. After that, i made a reboot and pressed F8 to choose an advanced options, i choose boot from last good known configurations. After that i was able to logon to the new windows 7 installation but a lot of problems come when i trie to check my data stored in another partitions of the same hard drive. Windows shows that i already have almost 300Go of data on the second partitions but when i tried to open any folders, thy are all empty, so it seems that o lost everthing on that partition. The weirdest thing in that is that every folders are there but thay dont have any content. So, even i selected the UPGRADE option and NOT the CLEAN INSTALL option there is no data in inetpub folder by example that was not supposed to when you select the UPGRADE option. So there is a way to rolback to installation of windows 7 or at least be able to see my data that are stored in a different partition that the Windows 7 installation partition ?? Please help me, it is almost the end of the wolrd for me, i lost everything on every partitions that i had.Thanks in advance for your helps.....

Yikes.At this point, if it was my system, I'd be acquiring an external hard drive, and backup software that can create a bootable CD. (Example: Acronis True Image.) I'd make a rescue CD on another PC, boot the system with the failed Win7 install from the rescue CD, and then image the data partition to the external HD.Alternately, you could find a freeware utility that allows you to read an NTFS partition from a boot floppy. (That's if you have a floppy drive.) Here's one:http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk-dos.htmIt may not make it convenient to copy your data, but at least it would let you see if they're still there. I imagine that similar utilities exist that can be run from CDs, if you don't have a floppy drive. (I have an external USB floppy drive for emergencies.)You tried an upgrade-in-place from Vista to Win7? That's too bad. If you'd done a custom install, you'd have a windows.old folder created, and you could restore your old OS from that:http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/971760(I don't believe that's an option for you, but I mention it just in case.)I wish you the best of luck.

Yep, yikes indeed. glad bobkn responded to this one, I was going to but I like Bob's idea's better (so would you compared to my ideas) :) Course I always have my data backed up to a network drive, so nothings lost in this type of situation. External drives for data is just so convenient nowadays. Bob's advice is very solid and we wish you luck.MCSE, MCSA, MCDST [If this post helps to resolve your issue, please click the "Mark as Answer" or "Helpful" button at the top of this message. By marking a post as Answered, or Helpful you help others find the answer faster.]

Hi, Thanks for your answer.I had a backup drive but he went out last week.....tooooooo bad ! I was supposed to buy another one the week end but it seems that i failed on this task !!! I didnt see an option "Custom Install" when i tried to start to Windows 7 installation....When i saw that my files in the second partition seems to not be there but i cant see it, i made an XP Pro installation on another folder that i named WindowX2so i thought that if the problem was from the Windows 7 installation, i would be able to access these that way. So the result was the same, i cant see any of these files. Before making this new installation, i backup a set of folders placed on the C drive and that seems to be associated with the update process and that are named : $INPLACE.~TR, $UPGRADE.~OS, $WINDOWS.~LS and WINDOWS.~Q. These folders seems to contains data from my old system but that dont even explains why the data on other partition cant be read on even see and i dont know if i can do something usefull with these data.... Another weird thing, if i select all folders include in the second partition and i right click it, properties to see the folders content size, i see 290 GB but any folders seems to contains somethings....So ill go buy another external hard drive to put the files from the second partition to see if they are still there, do you think there is a way to put me back on track with the folders $INPLACE.~TR, $UPGRADE.~OS, $WINDOWS.~LS and WINDOWS.~Q ?Thanks a lot for your helps

Let me encourage you again to try to copy your data from its partition before you do anything else with the machine. I expect that nothing has happened to those data, but it may be a little tricky to recover them without a working OS on the machine.I have another random suggestion: physically move the hard drive into a PC with a working Windows installation, and copy your data onto a backup drive. I'm a little worried about drive letters and all that, but I hope that nothing unfortunate will happen. (It would be safest to mount the drive into an external USB or Firewire enclosure or docking device, to assure that the PC wouldn't try to boot from it. eSATA would not be safe in that way.)An equivalent would be to disconnect your hard drive, put in a new one, and install Win7 onto that. As you have the 90 day evaluation version of Win7 Enterprise, there is no diifficulty installing it onto a blank drive.If you're uncomfortable with messing with hardware, perhaps you have a friend who would be competent to do this. (It's not a sophisticated bit of work.)As you are trying to install Win7 from a downloaded .iso, the DVD may have been corrupted during the burn process. As an alternative, you could consider using a USB flash drive instead. Here's how:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd535816.aspxI suggest using the freeware 7Zip to extract the contents of the .iso directly to the prepared USB drive. (I used MagicISO, but it's not free.) That gets rid of any concern about the DVD burn, and as a bonus Win7 will install much more quickly than from the DVD (at least for a clean install).Perhaps the experts at Microsoft will have something to add to this. (I'm a complete amateur.) It may be likelier for you to get a professional response after the new work week begins tomorrow, 18 January. They may have something to say about the utility of $INPLACE.~TR, $UPGRADE.~OS, $WINDOWS.~LS and WINDOWS.~Q. I do not. I really don't expect any of the data from a partition other than the OS one to have been affected, though.