Creating Hidden OS Install Partition
Oct 17, 2011
I'll make this one short. I had some time ago a GX623 laptop that had a hidden partition from where I installed win7. If anything went wrong, i just asked the laptop on startup to run the recovery manager, and boom, factory settings in 20 minutes flat (cleaned HDD). Now I am planning to get myself a reduced version of the 780DX MSI laptop (normally 2 hdds in raid 0), and i want to get a SSD as boot and a fw extras drive. The problem is i wanted to have that hidden partition on the SSD (and i plan to buy it apart and put it in myself once i figure out the laptop is stable). How to create your own hidden OS install partition...
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Oct 29, 2009
If you install win7 on a new hdd, I understand it will create a 100MB hidden partition to hold critical system files. What exactly is its purpose, compared to say, System Restore?
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Oct 9, 2011
I want to install a Linux Distro on my laptop. I will post as much details as possible so that you can guide me about how to free up some space so that I can create new partitions for my Linux Distro.I currently use the Linux VM images in VMWare Workstation, however there are certain tasks I need to perform which require, Linux to be installed as an OS instead of running as a VM.I have an HP Laptop which came installed with Windows 7 Home Premium OS.
There are 2 partitions:
C: Drive (Windows Installed on this one)
D: Drive (Recovery)
DiskPart output:
Code: DISKPART> list volume
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 E DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 G DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
[code]....
The column alignment is not proper, but hope it's clear that which is is the System Partition and which is the Boot Partition.Now, how do I free up some space on my HDD to be able to install a Linux Distro?I need about 25 GB of Hard drive space for linux including the swap partition.
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Aug 22, 2011
I am having trouble with creating shortcuts on my desktop by using the Create Shortcut Wizard (i.e. Right-click on Desktop or folder and selecting New->Shortcut). The wizard pops-up and I follow the steps on screen to create a shortcut. However, if I am making a shortcut to IE by locating the file in C:Program FilesInternet Exploreriexplorer.exe, my shortcut appears hidden on the Desktop or the folder I have created it in.
If I am making any other shortcut (such as Adobe Reader for example), I have no problem and, I can see the newly created shortcut (i.e. it is not hidden). To see my iexplorer.exe shortcut, I have to show all hidden files first in the Folder menu, in Windows ExplorerView. Even disabling the "Hide protected operating system files" does not work. Only the show all hidden files option works. I believe this might have been an effect left over by a virus/Trojan.
I had recently (in May 2011) removed several viruses from my computer, using the McAffee AntiVirus Plus software. I have also run MalwareBytes to be sure I have no Trojans on my PC, and I didn't. In addition, I have run some of the Microsoft Fix It applications to fix my IE security problems and remove broken shortcuts. I have also searched in Google and Bing for this kind of problem but it appears that I am the only one having it. I know most malware could do that to a PC and then the user has to manually set visible the files/folders such as Favorites, Desktop, etc.
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Jun 6, 2011
Table top, Acer brand, Aspire M5700HDD: 500GBPart: 1. Hidden partition, 20GB, eRecovery2.Partition C partitioned by Acer, 240GB, OS3. Partition D partitioned by Acer, 240GBI plan to format both C and D partitions and make 4 partitions.So, check with Acer firstAcer's reply is confusing, saying that the hidden partition will be damaged if format C partition
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Jan 27, 2012
My partition is hidden in formatted hdd.
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Jul 28, 2012
Today I wanted to create a partition on my WD 3 tb hard drive, so i opened disk manager and shrunk the current partition creating unalcolated space when i right clicked on it to create the new partition all the options were greyed out so i use partition magic to create the partition shortly after BOSD with error 0x00000078 or 7b not sure happened too fast and i have no clue how to get my computer working again, start up recovery has proved useless. i tryed the drive on my old computr and it worked just fine the new partition was there and useable. so can someone please explain how to fix this or if thats not posable please explain a way to get the inportant data(pictures word documents ect.) off my computer so i can reset it to factory settings without looseing anything?
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Apr 4, 2011
I have recently purchased a new Samsung NC110 netbook with Windows 7 Starter installed. However, I find it runs fairly slowly so I intend to install XP on it from an old installation disc.However, when I first started my netbook I set up a partition with 40Gb allocated to the C drive and the remaining 240 to a D drive. Not being that computer savvy I got confused and despite having a portable hard drive for back up and the computer having a separate hidden restore partition, I went ahead with this.My question is that if I start again with XP can I reset the partition to a single C drive with separate restore area?
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Sep 15, 2011
I'm thinking of installing Windows 8 on my second hard drive. I'm downloading it right now.
I would like to create a new partition for it so that it isn't on the same volume with my data files. I've done this often using 3rd party software but never using Windows 7 disk manager.
I have my D: drive backed up and will update it before I try anything but is this reasonably straight forward or are there pitfalls I should look out for?
I could always format the disk create the partition and then after installing Windows 8 restore all my data to D: again, but I'd like to keep it as simple as possible. There's over 500 gigs of stuff on my 1TB drive.
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Oct 30, 2012
I recently upgraded my Acer 722 netbook to an 265GB SSD and installed Windows 7 on it. I was wondering if there was a way to create a partition for a recovery environment (just in case something happens). I have a system image of this pc saved, however I feel it would be best to also create a recovery partition.
Note: This does not have a CD drive.
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Jul 18, 2011
Got an HP Mini 110 netbook. A person who gave it to me destroyed all the OS system, plus the RAM's were broken. So I replaced them and installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Starter 32bit. Everything works fine, but as most new laptops this one has a hidden recovery partition. The problem is I want to restore this machine to factory condition, but I cant access it due to the fact that I dont have HP Recovery Manager or something like that. The recovery partition itself is okay as I saw in Admin Tools. When going to System Recovery Options / System Image Recovery, the process cant detect any image - "Windows cant find a system image on this computer".
what could I use to restore it to factory condition? Maybe there is a software that I can install and use in the same way as HP Recovery Manager? Or maybe I can get HP Recovery Manager somewhere. so that you know, I also tried the F6 and itc methods, no luck.
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Jan 26, 2011
I have a new desktop computer with Windows 7. How might I create a DOS partition in the unused portion of the new hard drive. I would like to be able to use QuickBasic v4.5, and able to share the files I create in the DOS volume with the primary NTFS 64bit OS volume.
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Feb 10, 2012
My friend got a Dell laptop without any OS. I have a Win 7 disk but during the installation, the PC cannot find hard disks at all. I need help in creating a local disk C. The size is 640gigs and I want to use all of them.
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Jun 3, 2010
I have used a DOS utility called copywipe 1.14 to wipe a hard drive for a clean installation of windows 7. However, the utility has not only removed all data from the hard drive, it has also deleted the primary partition and master boot record as far as I am aware. create a primary partition on the hard disk and get it active and ready to accept an installation of Windows 7. I have a bootable USB stick with the windows 7 installation files and prefer to use this for the install as the DVD drive is working inconsistently.However, I think that I need a bootable USB stick with the FDISK and FORMAT programs on it before using the other USB stick with the windows installation, or at least that is my understanding? If my understanding is correct, how do I get a bootable USB stick with the FDISK and FORMAT programs onto it?
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Dec 28, 2012
How I will create more partitions on our system. Bcz I cant more partition on installation time bcz system not permitting to do this job.what I do???
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Feb 15, 2013
I am not sure if this is possible however is there a way of installing Windows 7, ctivating it with my OEM key and then created a recovery partition just in case I am ever in the situation where I need to run it using a hot key during boot?
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Nov 2, 2009
After purchasing my new Student Version of Windows 7 Professional I was keen to do a full system format, and start fresh. I no longer had a need for the Dell Recovery Partition which contained Vista (and a decent amount of bloatware), so I removed all partitions from my disk to start with a blank 180GB HDD.
I thought to myself, if I am going to start fresh I might as well do things right and mimic Dell’s setup with a recovery partition of my own. Now to be fair, this isn’t an extremely wild idea as there are plenty of manufacturers and software companies who provide such solutions very simple and easy. Everyone knows that Norton Ghost is fantastic, and Acronis TrueImage is right there with them. Of course you can simply run-up Imagex along with WinPE and sysprep a WIM to re-image your HDD at anytime for a free solution.
However, all these solutions require that you have some sort of recovery media for boot time operation, and the Imagex solution isn’t for the faint of heart. Now I do a lot of travel, and I wanted a solution that didn’t require me to look after a bootable DVD or USB stick, and because I am working with a laptop I didn’t have second disk which I could boot from via BIOS settings. My recovery solution had to be a Primary Partition on my only HDD with boot time options (in case my system is completely rooted.)
This turned out to be quite the challenge, as Windows 7 / Vista no longer support the simple easy boot.ini file that allows you to manually adjust boot time parameters. Instead Windows 7 / Vista have moved onto some fancy form of bootsect / BCD (Boot Configuration Data) which is very difficult to edit manually. Thankfully all of my hard work paid off and I now have a self sufficient system with all the diagnostics and re-imaging tools I could ever need. And thanks to Windows 7’s new Backup and Restore options, I was also able to include a system image which contained all of my settings and applications so that I don’t have to sit through 10 hours of Windows Update again.
What I ended up with is a Primary partition on my HDD that is a full and complete bootable version of the Windows 7 installation media. When I choose this partition at boot time it is exactly as if I have inserted the Windows 7 Install DVD into my disk drive! I can utilise all of the tools in the Windows Recovery Console (which includes the option to restore from a previously created system image), or I can simply re-install Windows 7 from scratch - without affecting my restore partition or boot menu variables!
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May 23, 2012
my Acer Aspire 5738G to factory settings. (I've done it before and i never seemed to have a problem). I know it should be simple to do this, by simply pressing "Alt" and "F10" at the Acer Splashpage when you bootup, and going to the acer eRecovery page. But when i do this i get the error message."HDD RECOVERY VALIDATION FAILED" I've tried my hardest, searched all over google for a solution, but every problem seems to be different.And i can't figure out what is particularly wrong with my computer. I am only an amateur when it comes to computers, and disks, partitions, locating partitions, etc etc is not my strong suit. Is there anyway i can check if the hidden partition "PQservice" is still in my drives? If it helps in anyway, i though i might mention that the previous time i restored back to factory settings.When i completed it, i didn't fully complete the windows installation process, and now whenever i log into my computer, it mentions that my "windows is not yet genuine, click here to register it blah blah blah". I didn't bother doing it because i assumed it wasn't vital, i was and have still been able to use my computer fine for the past year or so without having to do it.
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Oct 14, 2012
I want to delete the hidden primary partition that came by default from transcend 4 GB pen drive model TS4GJFV30. It is preventing the drive to boot with windows 7. Also it is not allowing the drive to play media files on media peripherals.
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Aug 8, 2010
I have a computer with the F10 option when I first turn on the computer. The hard drive failed so I have replaced it and installed windows 7. I am wondering if I can create a recovery partition when I turn on the computer and use the F10 option to restore back to when I first installed windows 7?
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Sep 5, 2012
I have a workstation on a gaming rig. I work and play games on it. I wanted to ask if I could separate my work files and GAMES setups (installed files) so they don't harm my work data.I do play games with cheats/hacks and they mostly contain malicious files which can damage my operating system. I want to create a seperate DISK image like Vmware in which I can run games without being worried about any harmful files accessing my work partition.
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Mar 10, 2012
I was checking Microsoft Office Word Starter 2010 and I realized that one of the files had hidden text in it. From Options - Display, I chose show hidden text and it was "Top of Form" at the top of the page. But I got curious about this and made some search and I realized that you can hide text in a txt file with a stream method and also there can be hidden streams in processes also.How can I find out if a doc(x) file has no streams in it. I mean the hidden text may be seen by the method of Options - Display; but can someone hide something with a password in a doc(x) file? If yes, how can I find this out?
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Dec 22, 2010
MOBO = Gigabyte x58a-ud5 I just got 2 SSDs I'm trying to put in RAID0 and hopefully clone my current install. When I change the bios settings to set the intel RAID controlled to xhd and raid but try to boot from my windows installation it wont boot, it gets to ''starting windows'' and then BSOD. When I turn the RAID setup off and try to install the XHD drivers the install aborts saying ''this is not a RAID setup". Is there something I can do to get the drivers installed on my current setup then clone it to the RAID drives?
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Mar 12, 2011
I just purchased a new HP laptop that has Windows 7 Home Premium install setup on the hard drive. I started and completed the installation. But I don't remember during the install asking me for an Administrator Name & Password. After the installation was completed I did the Recovery Disks, but have not yet rebooted the laptop. When is the Admin Name and Password created? I remember seeing a Rick-PC during the install, but I don't remember it asking for me to input a password. Am I fretting prematurely, or do I need to reboot, or can I use the Recovery Disks to start over?
I've been using an old PC with Windows XP. And I checked out 3 books on Windows 7 at the Library.
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Jul 3, 2011
I'm getting a new Macbook Air without an optical drive in a couple of weeks so I'm trying to create a bootable USB drive so I can install Windows 7 on it on day one (can't live without a bit of Windows 7)
I'm currently running Windows 7 on my Dell XPS M1330 which is a 32 bit install, but I want to create a 64bit bootable USB (the new version of Windows 7 I have is 64 bit and the new computer has 4 gig of ram).
When I try and do this through Microsoft's USB DVD Download tool, though, I get an error:
'Files copied successfully. However, we were unable to run bootsect to make the USB device bootable. If you need assistance with bootsect, please click the "Online Help" link above for more information.'
The online help section didn't even mention bootsect, but I'm pretty sure this is an issue because I'm trying to create a bootable USB install stick of a 64 bit version from a 32 bit version.
Does anybody know a way around this without installing 64bit Windows 7 on my computer?
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Jan 1, 2010
I noticed on the forums over the last few months, many people for one reason or another having problems getting their DVD drive to boot from their newly purchased Windows 7 DVD disks, but given that many retails and e-tailers will not accept boxed software returns, I thought I would write up a quick guide on how to create a bootable flash drive that you can install Windows 7 from. This guide can also apply to those who can boot from the DVD, but are having problems finishing the install process.
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Sep 11, 2011
Some of my important system files are no longer hidden and I can't hide them even with the Command Prompt "attrib" command. Files such as bootmgr and ntldr are shown and I can't hide them. Also, show Protected System files is unchecked and show hidden files is also unchecked so they shouldn't be showing. I tried to re-add their system file attribute but I keep getting an "Access Denied" error in CMD and I do not have user account control on and I'm on a Default Administrator Account.
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Jan 7, 2013
Under computer I go to my drive of folders. When I click new folder either by right clicking or by hitting new folder the system then creates 2 or 3 new folders at one time. I then have to go back and delete the extra folders. At first I did not mind because it only happened once or twice and now it is every time.
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Sep 28, 2010
Recently my XP machine bite the dirt and on one of its IDE NTFS HD contained a few folders with hidden and encrypted files. Thinking this was a decent way to keep family members from touching my work, I never excepted them to become inaccessible after I installed Win 7 Pro 64bit.
My problem is that I am unable to open, or move any of the encrypted and hidden files within the folders, yet I am able to only copy the folders, but without the files contained within, as I receive permissions errors.
When I try to move one of the files, I get a File Access denied error stating "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file", I press continue, and I get another error "Your require permission from Administrators to make changes to this file".
My user account "Mark" is an Administrator within the Administrators group, and I have set User Acccount Control to it's default setting. I have also enabled the hidden default Administrator account, logged in as it, and receive the same errors. If it makes any difference, the username of my XP machine was PHOENIX/Administrator
When I view the file attributes, Read-only, and Hidden are not selected, but under Advanced "Encrypt Contents" is selected. If I click details, I receive an EFS error "Unable to find the user information for the file", and another window appears called User Access with all of its options grayed out.
If I took at the Security Tab of one of the files, it says "You must be an administrative user with permissions to view this objects security properties", I click continue, and it shows the Administrators group (PHOENIX Administrators) with allow full control selected. After pressing ok, I click on Advanced, I click on the Owner Tab, and current Owner says "Unable to display current Owner", so I click on Edit, and I have the option to change owner to PHOENIX Administrators or PHOENIXMark, I chose Mark, press Apply and close and reopen the windows. I then try to move the file again, but this time the error says "I need permission from PHOENIXMark to make changes to the file"
I've had no problems accessing the other files from the XP HD, but I've spent weeks now combing forums for solutions, and I just can't access the hidden and encrypted files from the XP hard drive. I was able to access one encrypted and hidden spreadsheet without a problem, so I don't understand why I cannot access these two groups of folders and the files within their subfolders.
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Oct 26, 2009
I bought Premium the other day stupidly forgetting about my Wireless Adapter (Netgear WG11v2) got home and found out there isn't any drivers for it not surprisingly really.
I made a 30GB Partition for 64 Bit install a few minutes ago. I want to dual boot just to see if there's any chance of the adapter working on 7. If it works will I be able to upgrade Vista and then delete the boot sector and that partition? Or won't it work because I'd have already used the product key?
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Nov 14, 2009
ive an hd with 2 partitions, c and e, ive installed Windows 7 in e: can i make a second installation in c: with Windows 7? if i make a new installation of Windows 7 in c: i will be able to boot both os (the old Windows 7 in e: and the new one in c
what im afraid of is that after installing the new Windows 7 in c: i will loose the boot option to log in the old previous Windows 7 installation in e: but im pretty shure that i should be able to log in both Windows 7 cause the new installation will retain the second os boot option.. theres someone can confirm?
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