Setup Installation :: Recreate Or Reinitialize Hidden Boot Partitions
May 15, 2014
I have a very peculiar issue; after using various disk imaging tools such as Macrium and Paragon, my boot partitions seem to be strangely corrupted. The effects of this corruption are:
1) Plain-text boot menu instead of the new graphical boot menu,
2) Long delays before the boot menu is shown,
3) Even longer delays when doing native VHD boot, after choosing the boot entry from the menu.
I have done a lot of testing and experimentation, and on a virgin fresh installed system from the Windows 8.1 setup ISO, these symptoms do not appear. Only after I have imaged the system using the imaging tools above, do these symptoms start appearing. Unfortunately, just copying my main Windows C: partition using the same imaging tools re-creates the same issue. So I cannot rely on these partitioning tools.
I need a way - a set of commands - to re-create the boot partitions, re-initialize their BCD stores, etc. so that I can normally boot from my C: partition, as well as native VHD boot.
Needless to say, I want to avoid having to completely reinstall Windows on my C: partition, as that would be extremely time and effort prohibitive, if I only knew how to re-create and/or re-initialize just the boot partitions in question.
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Feb 13, 2014
I was using win 8 which was original came with notebook , then I installed Windows 8.1 (not upgrade from Store , just from .iso packet ). Because of some errors I re-installed another Windows 8 . iso and now I can't download Recovery from SW Update .It says recovery partition doesn't exist.I was able to use that before. How can I re-create my recovery partition again?
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Jan 6, 2013
I have Windows 8,W7,Wxp working well in multiboot. But i have Windows 8 instaled in C:but it is the 2nd partition.How can i move it to first partition ?W7 and wxp are probably on the 1st D: partition.
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Nov 10, 2013
After upgrading from 8.0 Pro to 8.1 Pro, the "Windows 7 Recovery" desktop app had disappeared. How can I recreate the "Windows 7 Recovery" in 8.1 Pro?
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Dec 8, 2013
I have hidden all of the foreign language fonts that are Windows 8.1 system fonts. However, the hidden fonts continue to display in Office 2010, Adobe Creative Cloud and Corel Draw X6, as well as other programs and applications.
How do I prevent the fonts from displaying or better -- which ones can be deleted? Surely Windows will function in the U.S. without a Himalayan font loaded.
I've tried using a third party font manager, both NexusFont and Bitstream Font Navigator, but with no improved results.
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May 27, 2014
Have 2 hard drives (SSDs).
Drive 1 : OS Win 8.1 for general web, office and junk running
Drive 2 : OS Win 8.1 for tweaked hobby work; Audio recording etc
Whilst I wish to not physically disconnect the drives on each boot. I would like to have the alternative drive hidden and not impacted when the other drive is running for the OS.Boot up from Drive 1 this currently shows as Drive C: and the secondary drive with the OS installed as D:
Boot up from Drive 2 this currently shows as Drive C: and the secondary drive with the OS installed as D:
End aim
Boot up from Drive 1 this currently shows as Drive C: and the secondary drive with the OS installed not running or showing on the system and vice versa. Is the online offline function what I need to use or is this going to put the drive offline for the system as a whole.
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Jul 17, 2013
I'm mostly a Linux user, but I recently bought a laptop with Windows 8 on it. After a few days dual booting I decided it wasn't for me, so I decided to delete the windows partitions and usa just Linux. I would like, however, to keep the recovery partition, so to be able to easily reinstall Windows again if I felt like I needed to, but I'm not sure what partitions should I keep. Here's a picture of my hard drive partitions as of now:
Do I need more than the restore partition? Can I get rid of the boot one? What about the recovery one? And the one flagged msftres?
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Feb 10, 2013
I dual booted win 7 n 8. now i am running out of space in the drive which contains Windows 8.
Win 7 is installed on C drive and Windows 8 on D drive. How can i interchange the OS on the drive. I want to install win7 on Drive D and Windows 8 on Drive C.
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Sep 2, 2013
I've got a HDD currently using MBR that has 2 partitions.
Code: DISK 1:Partition 1 - C: (System)Partition 2 - D: (Data)
At the moment I'm using Win 8 on the MBR HDD and I would like to convert to GPT without losing data stored on partition 2. I'll be reinstalling Win 8 on partition 1 so I can take advantage of UEFI.
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Sep 15, 2014
I had a 17 GB unallocated partition. I changed it to a Primary partition. It is empty. Can I merge it with the C: partition ? Picture--- edit--- A picture---
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Oct 17, 2013
When I click photos a screen comes up that says the following "All your photo sources are hidden.to show some change your settings" What do I need to correct this so when I click photos the photos are shown?
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Jan 14, 2014
using the UEFI install instructions from this forum. I do meet all of the requirements (Windows 8 64-bit iso, ASRock Z87 Extreme4 mobo, blank SSD). When I get to Step 7 in the UEFI guide, I only get 2 partitions instead of the 4 shown(Recovery, System, MSR, Primary). I only get System and Primary. I decided to delete all partitions and just run the setup on the unallocated drive...everything worked fine. I am just wondering what the consequences are of not having those 4 partitions. I still have the UEFI interface when I boot up so it appear that is working.
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Oct 18, 2013
I run 3 HDS. 1 SSD, and 2 normal drives.
I just clean formatted my SSD and installed Windows 8 on it, which I always put on that drive.
However I am seeing a bunch of partitions, 4 recovery partitions. Are these normal? If not, how would I get rid of them?
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Aug 3, 2013
I have 2 partitions: System Reserved (100mb) and Windows 8 (465gb). Windows 8 is marked as the system partition while system reserved is marked as Active & Boot. Is there any way I can like split windows 8, copy the files onto the new bit of unallocated space and make that partition the system partition instead of the "old" windows 8 partition?
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Feb 1, 2014
Why windows 7 and windows 8 introduced a limitation when using Disk Management, and is NOT possible to create more than 3 Primary Partitions? However, using DiskPart from command line it is VERY possible, no warnings or notices.
Code: C:Windowssystem32>diskpartMicrosoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600Copyright (C) 1999-2013 Microsoft Corporation.On computer: PAINKILLERDISKPART> listMicrosoft DiskPart version 6.3.9600DISK [code]....
As far as I know, there is a maximum of 4 Primary partitions on a hardisk, or 3 primary and one extended, and IN the extended partitions more that 4 logical drivers.However, from any disk utility like the old, deprecated, and buggy Partition Magic, acronis disk partition utility, gparted Linux, parted, cfdisk, fdisk, or even on the older Windows like Xp, nt, 2000, 98, me, ms-dos, freedos, I WAS ALWAYS BEEN ABLE TO CREATE 4 PRIMARY PARTITIONS, but with the new WINDOWS 7 and the new WINDOWS 8, it appears this limitation of only 3 PRIMARY PARTITIONS instead of 4. Don't know about Vista as I have skipped that version of windows on every PC that I have build or worked.
Or is working like this because of some hidden reason which I can't figure out by myself what could It be, and the only thing that I can observe is that while technology is evolving (hardware and software), we have limitations like this, to create only 3 primary instead of 4 primary while using Disk Management from administrative tools or right clicking on the computer and "manage" console.
Personally I am a little irritated/annoyed that now the disk management is having "handicap" and I can NOT find a serious reason for this idiocratic limitation. As we are "evolving" the normal path It would be more normal to be able to use more that 4 primary on a hardisk, from my point of view, not limiting to ONLY 3 Primary.
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Oct 8, 2013
I am using the guide to install Windows 8 over two partitions and I get the error:
Windows cannot be installed to this hard disk space. The partition contains one or more dynamic volumes that are not supported for installation. I followed all the steps 100%
Found this Get the paid version of EaseUS Partition Master at discount. Magic Partition Manager Freeware for PC/Server users. Upgrade EaseUS Partition Master Free can I use this to copy partitions?
Worked it all out, the software linked above was able to convert my Dynamic drive to a Basic drive for free!
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Aug 6, 2013
I have an pre-installed Windows 8 in my notebook. When I first got the PC, I got only C:/ partition so I needed D:/ and for doing this I used EaseUS Partition Manager. This is just a guess but I guess Windows can't find those recover partitions that are in my HDD. I haven't deleted those partitions just created D:/ and here is a screenshot I just take to show you the partitions I have.
I have already tried copying the Install.wim from my BIOS_RVY partition which was about 9GB and I moved it to C:/WinRec and used this command as I saw it from internet : reagentc.exe /setosimage /path C:WinRec /target c:Windows /Index 1 But i still get the error:
"Insert media some files are missing. Your Windows installation or recovery medial will provide these files."
This method didn't worked so any other too. I wonder how can I refresh or some sort of return my notebook to the factory settings from the recovery parts I have.
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May 29, 2014
Protecting partitions from factory reset?
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Jan 27, 2014
I recently decided to buy an ultrabook and I got me this one: LG Z360-7416, with a ssd and windows 8 (x64). As usual, it came with a lot of garbage installed which was using almost half of the ssd storage (128GB), so I decided to do a clean install. I got me a msdnaa copy of the windows 8.1 pro (x64). So, i used a pendrive to boot up on UEFI mode and selected custom install and when i get to the select partition, it shows everything fine, i select a partition and when a click on install, it returns an error saying it cannot install on my partition (i dont remember exactly what it says), and when i click on refresh, all my partitions vanishes, even going into the prompt and using diskpart doesnt show my partitions anymore. I tried to load some drivers, but it didnt work.
I was only able to install windows 7(x64), where nothing of these things happens, it installs realy easy. I tried to install windows 8 from windows 7, like an upgrade, but after it restarts, it gets stuck also. My disk is formatted on GPT, as im using EUFI on my windows 7 installation.
Tried almost a hundred times using all solutions i found online, but always the same result. And to get even more weird, some rare times it gets to the installation part, where it says the progress, but stays on 0% of unpacking files...
Its seens to be missing some especific driver to windows 8 be able to work with my ssd, but i cant get it right, but if it came installed with windows 8, it must be a way to make then work together.
Unfortunately i deleted the recovery partitions, so im stuck on windows 7.
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Oct 27, 2013
Recently I got my new laptop running under Windows 8.1 and was surprised with how the partitions were sized.
Here is the screenshot from the DiskManagement:
So I shrank the size of C: disk as you can see and got unallocated space. I want to attach that space to D: disk. I thought that is possible to extend recovery partition to unallocated space, then shrank recovery partition, and newly appeared unallocated then attach to D:/ disk. But failed with that.
I don't think that I really need those 900Mb and 350Mb recovery partitions and that they are useful, but it would be unwise to delete them while I don't know what are they for. Latter 20Gb recovery partition at the picture at least has the significant size to store something
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Jan 8, 2014
I installed Windows 8/8.1 on a system with a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H MB. When I look at the SSD where Windows is installed I have one partition. I also installed Windows 8/8.1 on an ASRock Z77 OC Formula MB. When I look at the SSD where Windows is installed I have three partitions - 300MB (Recovery Partition), 100MB (EFI System Partition) and 111.27GB (Boot,....Partition). Why did the Windows 8 installer create three partitions on the ASRock system? I think I understand the EFI partition since the ASRock BIOS has a "Load UEFI Defaults" option. The Gigabyte MB does not have this option in the BIOS? Is that because the ASRock MB has truly implemented EFI and uses the EFI System Partition to store boot information?
Why was the Recovery Partition created? I built this system from scratch so there is not any third party involvement. If I reinstall Windows 8 using a new - never used SSD will I get the three partitions? If I format the SSD with one partition prior to Installing Windows 8 what will I get?
I not concerned about the loss of 300MB,why I got different partition configurations on fresh installs of Windows 8 on two different MB's/Systems?
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Jan 13, 2013
How to hid all the partitions in the factory installed HDD for Lenovo Y580.
This is the scenario.
Firstly, i successfully migrated all of the following partitions:
OEM/Hidden partition,
C partition: boot drive/ program files and data drive &
D partition: containing drivers
from my Lenovo factory installed HDD to the SSD and to use the SSD as the primary boot drive . Now, i plan to use the factory installed HDD as my data drive. (I am using a caddy tray for this whereby i plan to swap out the optical drive and pluck in the Lenovo factory installed HDD). However, for "safety reasons" i do not plan to re-format the entire factory installed HDD but rather to keep those partitions just in case if my SSD fails.
Hence, how do i turn all the three partitions above (in the Lenovo factory installed HDD) to become dormant? I want the computer to boot up from the existing SSD but then to treat the factory installed HDD as the data drive and not to read from any of the three partitions in the factory installed HDD.
I am planning to use EASUS as my disk partition freeware.
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Sep 15, 2014
I am having problems installing UEFI & a Error 0x80004005 with Windows 8.1 OEM saying it can't create partitions for UEFI then creating 2 partitions for MBR installation instead. This using a 400 TB, hard drive, setup with a GPT system & nothing else & ready for Windows 8.1 to create the partitions.
The first time it happened I used MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional, to delete the partitions created by Windows 8.1 & convert the MBR to GPT, then used Wipe Disk function to erase all data and set all the bits to a 1.
The only thing that I can think is upsetting the installation is that I have left the other drives in the system including 1x3 TB drive, 1x2 TB drive and a second 4 TB drive.
The 2 TB drive has "Win 7 Ultimate" installed using MBR, the 3 TB drive is empty but ready to install Windows 8.1 setup with GPT, and the other 4 TB drive has a UEFI Windows 8.1 installed but broken.
I have also tried to install UEFI Win 8.1 on the 3 TB drive but it failed with the same error code as above.
This UEFI takes a lot to get ones head around dose't it, and me being much older than I once was makes it even harder. I have tried this installation at least 3 to 4 times now and doing these "Wipe Disk Functions" every time has so far lost me 3 whole days just in wasted time.
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Feb 2, 2014
I've had Win 7 Pro on my laptop for over a year. I installed a 2nd hard drive to it recently and today I installed Windows 8 Pro on the 2nd hard drive. It's been a roller coaster of good & bad luck.
The first install went fine, until I tried to install the Windows 8.1 upgrade from the Windows store, then things went bad and I had to go into Windows 7 and eventually delete the Windows 8 volume and change it from MBR to GPT because of UEFI (no secure boot enabled). What a stretch of error messages telling me I can't install Windows 8 on the blank hard drive because it was or wasn't MBR or GPT, or the automagically made partitions weren't in the right order.
After spending over 7 hours twice in a row installing Windows 8, I finally find out that there's no boot option for Windows 7 anymore.
The only clue I have is to use a Windows 7 repair disk and use diskpart.exe and make the Win 7 drive "active" but that's a little foreign to me at this point.
I'm looking in Computer Management / Disk Management from within Windows 8.
Disk 0: SYSTEM D: 438 MB NTFS (lengthened from 199 MB with EaseUS because Acronis 2014 thought it too small while crashing), Healthy (Active, Primary Partition); Win 7 E: 930.98 GB NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition); HP_TOOLS F: 102 MB FAT 32 Healthy (Primary Partition)
Disk 1: 300 MB Healthy (Recovery Partition) {no letter}; 100 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition) {no letter}; C: 931.00 GB NTFS Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)
And several other external disks which don't deserve mention today.
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Aug 21, 2013
First, some context: I have a Dell Inspiron 15R SE that came with Windows 8.
I've managed to get a working dual-boot system with Ubuntu 12.10. I can't remember exactly how I done that, but I remember that I had to disable secure boot. I think that the boot configuration those days was:
Secure boot: DisabledLoad legacy option rom: EnabledBoot list option: Legacy
This "configuration" worked perfectly for 6-7 months.
Then, one day (last week, can't remember the exact day), when I was using Windows 8 the computer crashed. I hard-rebooted and got this screen:
After executed boot-repair from a Ubuntu LiveCD dozens of times I've decided to eliminate Ubuntu temporarily and focus to get a system with Windows 8 working nice.
Then I used my recovery DVDs to recover the system. Yup, Windows has booted. But when I restarted first time I got the same error. Then I, digging a solution, pressed F12 after a reboot and got here:
The highlighted option allows me to boot into Windows 8. So I went to boot options (F2) and changed the following configuration:
Load legacy option rom: DisabledBoot list option: UEFI
Now I can boot directly to Windows without need to press F12.
But my objective isn't complete. I want to erase all Ubuntu entries from the seconds image and restore the legacy boot from the first imagem (because they worked before).
I did two things:
I erased all partitions related to Ubuntu (root partition and home partition).I created a Windows recovery disk (not a system recovery disk).
I used the recovery disk to run the automatic recovery procedure (I forgot the exactly name). I've runned it at least 10 times with no success. Then I went to command prompt to try the famous triad: bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /rebuildbcd. Still, no solution.
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Mar 24, 2014
After creating a UEFI bootable USB thumb drive with Rufus (using Windows 8.1 Enterprise ISO x64), for a Dell Optiplex 3010 (configured as UEFI only, no CSM, latest firmware version, Windows 8 installed), I didn't see a USB boot option, so I tried to add one manually. Unfortunately I erased the existing boot option (boot manager) by mistake. Although there were two boot options for PXE booting, the machine will not start anymore, even when there is an active WDS server on the network.
I also see Led's 2 and 3 lighting up, meaning according to the manual 'hardware ok but bios possibly damaged/corrupt'.
I understand I cannot start the machine from a bios boot disk because of GPT partitioning, and the UEFI USB boot disk I made might be corrupt (as it didn't show up as a boot option), however I don't understand why it won't boot from the PXE network card, as these boot options are still there.
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Jun 28, 2013
I have installed Blue 8.1 on a separate drive in my system along side 8.0. When I restart the 8.0 boots unless I manually select the 8.1 drive in bios. How can I alter the Boot menu to add the option to boot from either OS?
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Feb 18, 2013
Late last Fall I bought a new Desktop, an HP H81414, with Windows 8 installed with the intention of installing Windows 7 on an SSD. I migrated Window 8 to an SSD, removed that from the system, installed new SSD and put Windows 7 on it. Both worked fine. I wound up with 2 SSD's. capable of running on the EFI BIOS machine with Secure Boot turned off. I later bought a new laptop with Windows 8. I found the Win 8 with Classic Shell to be very acceptable.
What I would like to do now ,if possible, is to mount both SSD's in the HP case and switch to either one of them at boot.
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Apr 28, 2014
I had windows 7 running on my computer. When windows 8 came out I used a second harddrive as the windows 8 installation drive. Windows 8 automatically setup a dual boot system where every time I started the computer it took me a windows screen where I could select either windows 7 or windows 8. This has been going on since Windows 8 was released.
I decided it was getting old so I decided it was time to remove the old windows 7 harddrive. I tried doing it inside the windows 8 dual boot screen but could not find an option. So I decided to reformat the windows 7 harddrive. I did this in command prompt mode. After doing so when my computer restarted it said it could not find any harddrive to boot. Windows 8 is installed on the other harddrive, the one that was not reformatted. So how do I get it to start using that harddrive as the boot drive? I checked my bios and even physically disconnected the old HD that had windows 7 on it, but none of that seemed to work even though the Windows 8 HD is definitely in the boot order in the bios.
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Jan 6, 2013
Here: [URL] .....
Somewhere in that link it says:
During POST enter "BIOS Boot Selector Menu" by pressing F7.
Intel says: <F7> No uefi setup option in boot selection
Others say: <F8> No uefi setup option in boot selection
I say: <F12> No uefi setup option in boot selection
Lenovo Z580, my brand new laptop that is, its UEFI based and vymrdal's ISO from MSDN is also created to be installed as an UEFI Install.
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Apr 4, 2014
I get as far as " a driver is needed to continue installation" not found, make sure its on the right media. Here is what i got done on my own..
1- BIOS setting "legacy" and U E F I" boot from USB.
2- F 9 to choose boot order.. selected USB device
3- Installation starts for WIN 7
4- Driver is needed to continue, and i have no clue what it is..some one pointed me to . f 6 f l p y-x 64 because its an HP Envy...
5- Driver not found / wrong driver..
6- Shut down restart.......................
My DVD is Windows 7 ultimate X 32, X 64..
No matter what i cant boot form my USB /U E Fl /WIN 7 pen drive.seems like its not recognized or drivers for the USB chip set not installed.. Of course using the O E M DVD of win 7 fails. because of the G P T style.
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