Uninstalling PLoP - Lost all partitions

[lbaty]

I have a Fujitsu Esprimo Laptop (Intel Core-2, 2GB Ram, 120GB HDD) running Windows 7.

* Decided to try PLoP
* Followed instructions to install via Win7 boot menu
* Install worked OK but couldn't get PLoP to boot my Win7 installation (booting from UBUNTU live DVD showed my data still on the HDD)
* Created PLoP boot CD and selected "completely uninstall PLoP" expecting my PC to boot back to Win7
* Now I cannot boot
* Additional investigation revealed I now have no partitions on my HDD 

My friend owns a PC store so I borrowed his copy of Active@ Partition Recovery (it's still running but I don't like my chances).

Does anyone have any suggestion about how I can recover my data?
What could I have done wrong to cause this problem?

[Elmar]

hi,
how did you create the cd? the install cd iso's you get from my site do not allow the complete uninstall. only the option 5 (short uinstall) is allowed from cd.
http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#instop

restoring your system is not difficult. its good to know how your system looked like. i mean what partitions you had. its possible to restore one partition after the other. but you need some knowledge.

regards
elmar

[lbaty]

Thanks Elmar,

Looks like I made a few mistakes ...
* I used the floppy disk image on the boot CD
* Used complete uninstall which presumably expected to find a backup on the floppy (which didn't exist as the CD is effectively read-only).

No luck with Active@ Partition Recovery, but thankfully Winternals Disk Commander came to the rescue recovering my main partition (unfortunately unable to restore my encrypted partition).

I have since recreated my partition structure using various tools and restored my MBR using the Win7 boot DVD.

Have learnt a lesson and will be more careful in the future!