My windows 8 partition is inaccessible. Win 8 won't boot, even after attempted repair and running chkdsk.
This all happened after an automatic update.
I booted to another drive. Windows explorer shows the bad partition letter but no size or contents. Other partitions on the same drive are ok.
I also can see the bad drive contents from a cmd prompt.
I'm just going through the process of personalizing a new Inspiron 14z with Windows 8. The one thing that has me stumped are all the partitions that ship installed on the drive, due to a combination of everything being different on Win8, Dell doing things their own way, and GPT formatting. Generally I would like to know what the heck all those partitions are for, but it's fine if that will be a slow learning process. Specifically and immediately, I need to change the drive letter assigned to the "WINRETOOLS" partition. Currently it's D:, and the problem is that for 10 years I've been using D: as my data partition, and quite a number of applications, configurations, settings, etc. assume that all my files are on D:. For instance, by having all my music on D:, I can sync iTunes library and preference files between machines, and all ratings and playlists match from one machine to the next. Same thing for my photos. Same thing for a bunch of utilities like FTP consoles, sync utilities...
In a prior version of Windows, I would just go into Disk Management, right click the partition in question, assign a different drive letter, and job done. On my machine, the 2GB WINRETOOL partition doesn't even show as having a drive letter in Disk Management, despite the fact that it's D: in Win Explorer. Additionally, the only right click option is "help". I've taken that option, and, despite its aspirations, it's not useful.
How can I change that drive letter to something else? Should WINRETOOLS even have a drive letter in Explorer (some posts I've seen indicate that it should be hidden)? If I do manage to change the drive letter, will that break its function, whatever that is?
My machine has a 500GB spinning disk, which has all the aforementioned partitions. I've shrunk the C: partition to 80GB, in preparation for creating a data partition. I have not yet formatted the unassigned space as I would like to solve this WINRETOOLS thing first. Finally, there is a 32GB SSD that I've set up as an Intel Smart Response cache, and it's no longer visible to the OS.
My C: is a SSD Id like to have back as one disc, one partition..
The 101 mb 'unallocated' It was previously listed as " reserved system protected drive" I removed and formatted its 101 mb...back to empty, unallocated, can I lose that partition??
It shows up under disc management as a part of c...but really has no drive letter at all it just shows as C:
I'm trying to access the EFI partition and view certain files.
I have an EFI installed Windows 8 64 bit system on a MacBook Pro retina. (ie not BootCamp)
I have mounted the EFI partition in Command Prompt and it appears in Windows Explorer, however it refuses me access to it. Access denied.
How can I get access to its contents please?
My primary reason to access it is to view and copy my current BCD file. I suppose a method to copy that file might be a good enough work around, at a pinch.
He has a DELL XPS machine, an i7 newer model running 8.1, he's got a main internal HD as C: and a permanently added USB drive with 3 partitions ad D: E: and F: but on reboot the F: partition suddenly goes up a letter to G:, the other two stay the same.
Apparently its been fine until recently when this started happening, I made sure the used Disk Management to change the letter back but on reboot its back to G:
He has no other devices attached and any other USB drives either have a selected letter near the end of the alphabet or are not assigned a set letter but none are attached when the machine boots. It sounds like the F: is being reserved by something, possibly registry wise but I don't have the machine in front of me to check and I would rather its me using regedit and he's got slippery fingers due to arthritis and is prone to over clicking and wrong key presses.
where to check or what to check, I've done as much as I can via Skype but at a loss as to why its only doing it to one partition and always the same one, also did a dischk and the partiton is ok.
Either with my startup today, or sometime in the last day or two, all my drives/partitions in Windows Explorer (and XYplorer) have lost their labels and are now showing as "Local Disk." Looking in Windows 8 Computer Management and EaseUs Partition Manager, the labels are there, as shown in the screenshot. I ran all three main repair modules of Yamicsoft Windows 8 Manager and there have been a few reboots, but still the same.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI found that my two Windows 8.1 laptops will not copy the entire contents of any folder to my Iomega network drive. Only the folder alone is copied and none of the sub-folders or individual files. I can copy individual files separately, but not the whole folder sub-folder, and files together. I have no problem doing this with my Windows 7 desktop PCs. My network drive is connected directly to my Apple Airport Base Station router.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI'm booting off my SSD which is drive C: and I have games and programs on an extra hard drive which was origanally drive H: but after a restart it switched to I: and when I go into Disk Management to change it Drive H: isn't there.
View 3 Replies View RelatedAlright, I just installed my Windows 8 Pro from a USB drive as I was installing it I was installing Windows 8 on the W:/ drive but once it was installed I came to found out that that My C:/ drive which was originally Windows 7's drive letter now belongs to Windows 8, and now the drive that is now Windows 7's is D:/ is is possible to change it back a W: drive or something? and yes, Windows 7 is the main partition on the system, I'm not sure why it changed but it's actually the first time this has happened.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI've installed Windows 8 starting the installer from Windows 8 RP and I've just noticed that it picked up the drive letters from the old system. Now my system drive is Y instead of C , because in the old system that partition was Y. If I try to change the drive letter in the Drive Management it gives an error. how to change system drive letter in Windows 8 RTM?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI just recently built a new Windows 8 machine. Since I knew I was going to be getting an SSD down the road, I planned ahead:
Nutshell, the C: drive, the boot drive, is at the end of the partition, sized to 220 DB, so I knew it would be smaller than the 240/256GB drive I knew I'd eventually be getting. The Users folder is on the D: drive, so the C: partition is only the OS and apps. Everything's dandy.
I found EasyBCD and used it to move the boot manager over into the C: partition, so theoretically that's all I need to move over to the new drive. So what I want to do is move the C: partition over to the SSD, have it stay C: once it's there, and then have it boot into that partition. (Note that I cannot disconnect the hard drive when it's time to reboot because that's where the Users folder lives and I don't want to break that.)
I keep running into problems with the "keeping it C" part. When I clone the drive over, the old drive stays as C: (as you would expect), and the new drive gets a new letter. Attempts to change those letters using DISKPART from the Win 8 install DVD have been either futile or disastrous.
I've been using the free version of Macrium as my cloning / imaging tool...is there a better free tool I should be using?
When I installed Win8 (at this point, updated to Win8.1 Update) on drive V:, it changed it to C:. Since I'm used to the drive letters as they used to be, I'd like to change it back to V:. I figure I'll have to change all the registry entries for installed programs from C: to V:.
How to confirm that I'll have to manually make those registry changes?
When I put my usb in my pc I see on my Computer a new drive letter H:
So now I have: C: D: E:
Floppy: A: and my DVD as F: and a Removeable disk I: but I don't have a any removeable disk on any usb port in my pc.
When I put now my other usb it's assigining it as drive H:
But I need it to be G: since I need to save to it something from a program I saved before and it must be G: not H:
How can I change/force it to be drive letter G: instead H: ?
does windows explorer show folder size?
View 5 Replies View RelatedIt was very upsetting in case of Windows 7 the system explorer was unable to retrive folder size information. It was possible to preview file size in detail view but not folder size.
How is this feature in case of Winodws 8 explorer. Is the appropriate hook exposed in API or is it still missing as it was in case of Winodws 7?
Using Windows 8.1 for the first time.
Toshiba Laptop
(1) How to increase the font size of Windows Explorer?
(2) Is it possible to put in folder, file name in the TaskBar? I can pin applications like Ms Word, Power point but not any specific file or folder which I am using.
(3) The time in the task bar is showing as 23:34.How can I make it to 11:34?
(4) Like Windows XP is it possible to bring in a kind of a "Show Desktop" in the task bar so that I can quickly move into the Desktop from a current window.
I tried to change the drive letter because it wont appear, but it didnt work. I have tried the CMD method with the volumes but the volume did not show up. All I know is that its a G-Technology hard drive. I tried formatting it to NTFS but that wont work. Basically I tried everything and nothing works. P.S The drive is Disk1...
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have a windows to go installation in a large external hdd, so I have made a second partition to use as data storage.
Now, when I insert the disk on my "normal" windows installation I would expect the data partition to be available... Instead I have to assign a letter to be able to use it.
The disk appears to be online and once assigned a letter you can unplug it and plug it again without having to do the letter assignment again.
BUT, every time I restart the pc I have to do it all over again.
I upgraded to Windows 8.1 from Windows 8 and I can no longer see the files inside the folders on my networked drive. Before I upgraded I could see them, after the upgrade - not so much. The folders are fine, I can see them, just no files visible. There's no network issues as the files are visible from my Win7 machines and my wife's Windows 8 machine. All the standard default sharing and viewing settings are correct. Even if I put the direct path in File Explorer is tells me there's nothing there. I'm absolutely baffled. I have never seen this particular type of sharing issue before. I'm a pretty savvy Network Admin so the basic troubleshooting (and standard sharing settings) has been covered.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI have an SSD drive with 2 partitions on it. 1st partition has Win 7 on it as drive letter C. 2nd Partition has Win 8 on it as Drive letter W. At 1 point in time if I booted to Win 8 the drive letter would dynamically change from drive letter W to Drive letter C and make Win 7 drive letter W. The revers was true if I booted to Win 7. Something has changed somewhere, where this dynamic drive letter changing is no longer working. When I boot to Win 8 the drive letter remains to be drive letter W & Win 7 is still drive C. This is causing problems when I'm booted to Win 8 with regard to installing & using apps while in Win 8 since the C drive is really the Win 7 system drive.
How can I fix this to get back the dynamic flip flopping of drive C? I confess to being somewhat ignorant when dealing with this particular area of things.
This morning, my laptop wouldn't boot and I got a message saying I needed to use the recovery disk to fix the problem. A little investigating using the command prompt from that disk revealed my system and data partitions had no drive letter assigned to them. A little work with Diskpart fixed that but left me wondering what would have caused them to disappear.
View 1 Replies View RelatedThat is, I can allocate it one through drive management but it still doesn't show next switch on in My Computer, so I must go in an allocate it one. Otherwise it works fine. Bit tedious after a while.
Do I have to reformat it completely to regain auto allocation of a letter?
Used to be fine, but not now. A USB 3.0 Toshiba 500 gig external drive (sealed unit) doesn't have this problem.
After last "patch-tuesday" my Windows 8.1 don't assign drive letters to hotswaped HDD's and USB keys.
When starting my backupdrive (eSATA), it is now without a drive letter, I can give it one though in disk-management, but before last tuesday, it was given a letter automatic. Same problem when I connect an USB-HDD or an USB-stick.
Is there a way to get back "autoassign of a drive letter"? (don't know the correct word for this function in English).
I'm trying to find a way to make icons of images in Explorer larger than the "extra large" option. I don't see the slider in Win 8 Explorer to do that. Is there something else that could be done to size the icons to what I want them to be?
View 5 Replies View Relatedhow to move then resize a partition. I have a Dell XPS 12 Win 8.1 system with 7 GPT Primary factory partitions. I cloned the 256 GB mSATA SSD to a 512 GB mSATA SSD.
*** Right now my disk looks like this with (D) empty (no data):
|-OS (C)--|-Data (D)-|-PBR Img-|-None--|-Unallo--|
|-112 GB-|-109 GB--|---6 GB----|-8 GB-|-227 GB-|
|---#5----|-[empty]--|----#6----|--#7---|---------|
I've omitted 4 uninvolved factory partitions, showing only the rightmost 3 factory partitions (#5 #6 #7) and an Unallocated area.
*** My objective--w (D) & Unallocated combined--is this sequence:
|-OS (C)--|-PBR Img-|-None--|-Data (D)-|
|-112 GB-|---6 GB---|-8 GB--|-336 GB--|
|---#5----|----#6----|--#7---|-[empty]--|
I need to know what to do to get this all to happen.According to an expert Dell XPS 12 user, partitions #5, #6, and #7 MUST be contiguous in the last sequence shown, because otherwise a Dell backup program will not work, plus there are other problems.
I'm looking for partition manager how-to details, hoping to simply drag 109 GB (D) over to the right (just left of the 227 GB Unallocated area) then easily make those two a 336 GB (D) drive
My objective sequence HAS been accomplished by the expert Dell XPS 12 user mentioned above who arranged his partitions just like that, although he had different intermediate partition positions and proceeded somewhat differently. He Outlines what he did here:
How to upgrade the SSD in the XPS12 (...whilst avoiding the mistakes I made!) - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community
I've tried partition managers' Resize/Move function with a slider, but exactly how to use the slider to move a partition eludes me.
These partition managers I've tried and have installed now are:
-EaseUS Partition Master 10.1
-Paragon Partition Manager 2014 Free
-MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 8.1.1
(I've also tried its bootable CD that runs under Tiny Core Linux)
Unless I meet my objective above, I can't use my XPS 12 for work, since I need a 512 GB SSD to hold all the existing data I have.
1) When I create my partitions using the Windows 8.1 Setup Wizard, what cluster size does it put for my SSD?
2) How to check what cluster size I am currently on?
3) For SSDs, is it best to stick to the default 1024 cluster size or to manually create the partition using Disk Part and set it as 4096?
4) If your answer for 3 is to manually create them, what are the commands in Diskpart that I need to enter to have the 3 partitions ?
i'm using Windows 8 Home 64 Bit.
I used AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to add a NTFS Partition to my USB drive. I want to store large files over 4GB on this partition, while having the rest of my files on the primary partition which is FAT32. The problem is, when I plug my drive into the computer it only shows the primary partition.
Is there any way to get Windows to show both partitions when I plug the device in? I want to be able to store files on both partitions.
After doing some research, I found that one possible way would be to set the USB device as a "Fixed disk". I was unable to figure out how to do this.
The device is a 32GB Silicon Power Blaze Removable Disk with USB 3.0.
I am trying to get my external hard drives setup from a freshly rebooted installed computer. I recently placed an external hard drive with all my back up files on my computer, but this drive is not going to be my main drive. I have two others I will be using as a main hdd and a backup drive that are brand new.
So, the question is, if I were to use a utility like the Windows 8.1 disk management feature to either delete the drive letter or even change it to another one, will that mess up the external hard drive or even lose data? Because until I transfer my files to my backup disk I am afraid of losing my only copy of my files.
I have a new HP Pavilion 15 e073sa laptop with a 750Gb HD. I would like to mimic my Win7HP setup on my old Toshiba laptop which is to partition the C drive to around 150Gb and have the rest as a data partition. (Currently my new HP's C drive has only 30Gb used).
Looking at Windows' inbuilt shrink volume tool, it will only let me shrink the HP C drive to half the size (around 348Gb) due to immovable system files. This tool has a note to see the defragmentation report for more details though I can't discover more...
So: Using inbuilt Windows tool, can I shrink my C drive, then shrink the shrunken C drive again (and again?) to achieve my desired 150Gb C drive? (and of course then consolidate the resulting empty spaces into one partition)
Or is it better to go for a 3rd party software solution? I have emailed the support team at Minitool Partition Wizard and they tell me there is no difference between installing their program onto my C Drive to manipulate it, and using a bootable CD to resize and partition my drive, - thought they say that the change will be irreversible?
I am new to Windows 8, and first time with a laptop. I have 1tb hard drive (minus a few gb) in c drive. d drive is being used as recovery
This is how it was setup. What I would like to do is to partition the amount of space i have from c drive into another drive.
Can manage to partition some hard drive space over to another driver letter, if i do a fresh install of windows, will this new drive be formatted too?
(Just asking this because when I owned a desktop computer, I had two drives. A c-drive and a d-drive. When I re-installed windows 7 on the desktop, all my files were still available on the d-drive, hence asking the above last question).
Using Livemail in Windows 8.1 for no apparent reason the content of all messages in one or more storage folders will disappear. The message header is OK, but the contents of all messages in that particular folder are identical. It seems to occur only when I drag a new message from the inbox or sent box into the storage folder. And not every time.
I have tried restores the message contents. Clearly the WLM storage file is messed up - is there any way to restore or recover it?
