Windows Troubleshooting: Deleted Partition Now Won’t Boot

"How do I recover a deleted boot partition?"

Deleted partition now won't boot? Don't worry; you are not the only one who did this.

What reason made you decide to delete a partition? Maybe you were about to set up dual-boot, or perhaps you simply discovered a partition in Disk Management with no drive letter, but it took up a lot of space, so you wanted to free it up.

No matter why you deleted that partition, now you were in trouble – you had the Windows boot partition deleted, and now you could not get Windows to boot.

What on earth led to the situation here? If we look up the root of this problem, what type of partition you have deleted is the key.

There are lots of partitions on hard drives – for convenience's sake, hard drives are logically divided into several parts to store different types of data, facilitating users to manage their data.

How many partitions can GPT have?

For GPT hard drive users, in default, you are supposed to have these partitions as follows:

An EFI System Partition 

A Microsoft Reserved Partition

Primary Partitions 

Recovery Partition

On the one hand, EFI System Partition, also called ESP partition, stores the EFI boot loader and applications for firmware, which is necessary for Windows to boot – so you may have deleted this partition and led to an unbootable Windows.

On the other hand, primary partitions contain the files and data necessary for the operating system to boot; if you delete a primary partition that stores the boot files, the computer will be unbootable.

On the contrary, if you have removed a data partition, you can still perform GPT partition recovery with the help of partition recovery utilities.

How many partitions are in an MBR?

For MBR hard drive users, by default, you will have these partitions:

A System Reserved Partition 

4 Primary Partitions (Sometimes 3 primary partitions plus 1 extended partition, in which you can create several logical partitions) 

Recovery Partition

On the one hand, System Reserved Partition contains boot configure data and system boot files, and it was created when OS was installed. The files in it are necessary and need to be intact. If you delete this partition, then the computer cannot boot.

On the other hand, the primary partition, which is used to store boot files, cannot be deleted.

In a nutshell, likely, you may have accidentally deleted EFI partition, SRP partition, or primary partition, which contains boot files. Then how to solve the problem "Deleted partition now won't boot"? Follow the tutorial below.

How to fix "Deleted partition now won't boot"?

Since you cannot get Windows to boot, we must get it bootable first. You might have learned that there are some commands for this issue, but we don't suggest you do so because it is pretty dangerous for users without sufficient knowledge about commands.

For safety's sake, you might as well take advantage of an easy and helpful tool. AOMEI Partition Assistant can help you fix this issue quickly and safely.

Beforehand: Prepare a bootable media

To get the Windows bootable, we need to recover the deleted partition that Windows needs for boot. Still, prior to that, work is required beforehand – preparing a bootable media.

Here let's utilize AOMEI Partition Assistant to enjoy the excellent features.

Easy to operate. An intuitive user interface, simple user guide, simple steps for partition recovery, and other features. 

Compatible. Supports Windows 11/10/8/7/Vista/XP/Server. Windows Server users could upgrade it to Server Edition. 

Competitive. A sophisticated team with advanced technology developed it.

Download the free trial version to start troubleshooting.

Step 1. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant on a bootable computer > connect a USB stick > "Make Bootable Media"> "Next".

Step 2. Choose "USB Boot Device"> "Proceed".

Step 3. Click "Yes".

After that, you could get available bootable media to boot the computer. As a multi-functional tool, it can solve users' problems by rebuilding MBR to recover MBR partition table.

Troubleshoot: Recover deleted partition

With the bootable media get ready, we can move on to get things fixed.

No need to download any other software or type any commands; just using the USB stick preinstalled with AOMEI Partition Assistant when creating bootable media, you could fix the problem securely.

This time, the "Partition Recovery Wizard" feature will help.

This tool can assist users in recovering lost/deleted partitions from HDD/SSD/USB/SD card/memory card, etc. 

As an easy-to-operate utility, it requires no expertise in computer or data recovery. 

It applies to all file systems like FAT, exFAT, NTFS, ext4,ext3, etc. Users can easily retrieve ext4 partitions with this tool if they are using an ext4 partition.

Now follow the steps to recover your deleted partition.

Step 1. Connect the USB stick to the unbootable PC > change the boot order to boot from the USB.

Step 2. Preinstalled AOMEI Partition Assistant will lead you to the user interface > click Partition Recovery Wizard > choose the drive that has lost partition> Next.

Step 3. Choose a search method. Try Fast Search for the first time; if failed, use Full Search. Full Search scans profoundly and thoroughly but takes longer.

Step 4. When finished, with all lost partitions detected and listed, you can select the partition you have deleted > Proceed.

Thus, you could get accidentally deleted partitions back with ease.

Bonus tips

With helpful information gathered in this tutorial, you could fix the problem "Deleted partition now won't boot" safely and quickly without worrying about further damage. But precautions are better than hindsight.

From the very beginning, no partitions should be deleted when you are not aware of the results it will bring; What's more, in case you may delete a data partition in the future one day, backups are always the ones that can save you from the dilemma.

AOMEI Backupper, a good backup tool, will guard your data with its unique features "Disk Backup", "Partition Backup", "System Backup", etc.