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I wanted to install ubuntu gnome as dual boot to my windows 7. When trying to install, I got a pop up about forcing UEFI. I didn't pay much attention to that and I clicked on force. After that I got the installation type, and for some reason I was curious what would happen if I would press the Use LVM with the new Ubuntu GNOME installation and then Install now by erasing disk and installing Ubuntu GNOME. When I continued to that, I was redirected to the partition table and I realized all my windows partitions were gone and replaced with these in the photo:

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I immediately panicked because I hadn't noticed the revert option and turned off my PC. When rebooting I was unable to boot to windows 7 and I went to reinstall Linux to see if my partitions were still there. To my surprise they were still as in the photo. I then noticed the revert option, and I only managed to revert the /dev/sda1. The other ones no matter how many times I press revert they don't change back. I screwed up big time, is there any way I can revert this?

Sumeet Deshmukh
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tiempo
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If the screen shot you've posted accurately represents your current disk state, then I'm afraid you've trashed your Windows installation. If so, it will be very difficult to completely recover it at best, and probably impossible, unless you have a recent backup. I suggest you check out:

The first two of those links point to questions and answers on this site relating to data recovery. The remaining three provide information on the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) and its 2.x variant, the Unified EFI (UEFI), which is the type of firmware your computer has. When you re-install Windows, and eventually Ubuntu, it's important that you understand EFI issues, since you ran into a mixed-mode problem (as described in the final linked page) on your first attempt, and you made the wrong choice. That wrong choice (to force an EFI-mode install) wasn't the key cause of your problem, but if you hadn't wiped your Windows partitions, it would have created another (lesser) type of mess anyhow. Thus, you should understand the EFI so that you can install both Windows and Ubuntu in the same boot mode (both EFI or both BIOS).

Rod Smith
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  • Thanks for your answer, I connected my hard disk into a different computer running windows and ran testdisk. That did the trick. Also, before seeing the answer, I had tried some other programs as well that didn't seem to work. – tiempo May 09 '17 at 18:43