can set primary boot in bios(by for example press f2 when booting) but my question is that is it possible to set primary boot in windows(for example set to boot from USB FLash Drive) and then reset the windows and the windows will boot from USB?
View 9 RepliesMy system was dual booting Windows 8 and Windows 7. I have deleted the Windows 7 option from the msconfig of Windows 8. Now the system boots automatically into Windows 8 with no problems. If I delete/ format the Windows 7 partition through Windows 8, will it cause any problems?
Also, I found that Windows 7 partition is marked as primary, while the Windows 8 is logical. I
Windows 8 is in C Drive (You can see that its logical)
Windows 7 was in E Drive
There is also a 2.50 GB Simple Basic FAT32 partition with status as - Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition) - What is this?
PS: I do have EasyBCD 2.2 and MiniTool Partition Wizard Server Edition Installed. The latter is not able to modify C drive and set it as primary.
When first I tried to install a fresh copy of windows 8, I deleted all the partitions including systems reserved etc
Now It shows 2 drives where both of the drives are now currently unallocated and are ready to create fresh partition:
Drive 0 - 500GB HDD <== This is where I want to install my windows
Drive 1 - 20GB SSD <== This is where the system is creating the system partition
When ever I create the partition in either drives the windows create the system partition (350MB) in ssd automatically. and when I install my windows on 500 HDD then windows wont work because the systems files are on other drive. Furthermore, I dont want to install my windows on ssd because of the limited space. So How can I install my windows in 500GB HDD so it creates the system partition also in the same drive i.e. drive 0 - 500GB HDD
NOTE: I have tried everything using diskpart and making the drive 0 active but still its not working. I dont want to send it to Samsung warranty because they are charging me like $100
Purchased a new laptop . It has one large C 1T drive . I would like to create 4 primary partitions , one for programs, one for data , another for media , and the rest unallocated.
How to use built in disk manager ? Can I create several partitions at one go?
Is it easier to use a 3rd party partition software?
I have two keyboards loaded in Windows 8 Pro: US English , and US International. How do I make US International primary? The examples given always list English and Danish for instance, so you can move one up or down. But in my case, I always see one keyboard, even though both are active.
View 8 Replies View RelatedI am a brand new Windows 8.1 user as of a couple of days ago. I have recently updated to Windows 8.1 and am enjoying it. I have been adjusting defaults to my liking easily enough. But I am having trouble with one small item in my dual monitor setup.
In the Taskbar and Navigation properties, I have unchecked the setting "Show Start on the display I'm using when I press the Windows logo key". This does what I want in regard to always displaying Start on my primary monitor regardless of which screen I am working on when I click the Windows logo key. But if I try using Win+S to open the Search bar (or one of the other search hotkeys as well) while a window on the secondary monitor is active it opens on the right side of that secondary screen instead. Any other time, the Search bar opens on the primary monitor as expected. Any way to make the Search bar always dock to the right side of my primary monitor as well, but I haven't found how yet.
I have 2 hard drives and 1 is a lot bigger than the main one. I was wondering if I changed them around would my computer run faster and how I would go about doing this, what I mean is make my larger hard drive my default disk C if possible? [URL] ....
View 1 Replies View RelatedI would like to ask what is OEM, EFI and unallocated partitions?How can i merge unallocated partitions into primary one???Another question is when my alienware restart , I just see my alienware Logo, cant enter to BIOS ??Computer logins smoothly just cant seem to enter BIOS.I will attatch an image of my disk management.
View 1 Replies View RelatedI recently sold my Gateway laptop and the Windows 8 software was already installed with purchase. I want to remove my info and myself as the primary user in windows 8 so the new owner can set themselves up. I tried on my own to figure out and was only able to set up a separate "User" for the new owner until we can resolve.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI would just like to check and make sure I have this correct. I have the following HD and feel they should be setup like this.
Disk 0
C: - Primary
D: - Extended
Disk 1
F: - Extended
Now this is where I am not sure
Disk 2 - USB Portable Drive
G: - ? (I would think also Extended but I see it came out the box as a Primary)
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.
I live in Sweden but I want to work in English. I purchased W7 Ultimate so that I would be able to use English. My question is if I purchase the "8 Pro upgrade DL will I be able to use English as my primary language? I also need to be able to use a Swedish keyboard.
View 3 Replies View RelatedI have a question. One related to hard drives, multiple windows os', and BIOS.
I have save data on my old hard drive (disk) that I need to retrieve that is in the Windows7 "My documents recognized by Windows 8.1 (Windows 8.1 is on my new SSD).
I am concerned that my plan to retrieve my data might cause an error in the bootloader if I perform this method
Reboot in Windows 8.1
When the computer gets to the BIOS splash screen, press F11 (boot options)
Select old harddrive (disk drive with Windows 7) to boot into
This will boot in Windows 7 Home Premium which is located on the disk drive
Log in and go into file explorer
retrieve data from documents menu
copy/paste data from Disk Drive to new folder in SSD
Reboot in Windows 7
When the computer gets to the BIOS splash screen, press F11 (boot options)
Select SSD (with Windows 8.1)
Move data to documents folder
(If computer auto reboots from SSD then skip steps 9 and 10)
WCP is just around the corner. Today I shrunk my drive and created 25 GB space for the same..But why is it marked as logical drive instead of primary partition?
View 9 Replies View RelatedOK, long story short. I did a clean install to Windows 8 Pro 64. Because of the System Reserved partition, it showed both Win 7 and Win 8 available and would prompt to do a dual boot. I cleaned it up by following the instructions on the below link.
Dual Boot - Delete a OS - Windows 7 Forums
It now no longer dual boots, and Windows 8 is fine. The only issue remaining is that my primary drive in drive management still has unallocated space. Disk 0 has 351MB Unallocated space, and 465GB of system boot, page file, etc...
In the instructions, it says to "Right click on the partition that contains the OS you want to delete and Delete Volume. Then right click on the deleted volume and Delete Partition. Now you should have "Freespace" where this partition originally was."
Well, I can't do that. When I right-click on the unallocated space, all I can do is: New Simple Volume, Properties. Everything else is greyed out. I also can't extend the other partition, the "extend" option is also greyed out.
I'm now on Win 8... How to put that 351MB onto the main partition?
I just bought a new laptop - an ASUS N550JV - with a single 1TB hard drive. I specifically sought a 1TB hard drive because I intend to store a lot of photos on the laptop and already have over 600GB of photo data to store.
When I got the laptop the first thing I did was to go through the windows update process to get everything up to date, then I upgraded to Windows 8.1 (the laptop came with Windows 8), then I ran the windows update again until everything was up to date.
It was only then that I opened up file explorer with the intention of setting up a basic folder structure for the files I planned to transfer to the laptop. I was dissapointed, at that point, to discover that instead of a single 1TB C: drive, I saw a 370+ GB C: drive and a 530GB + D drive. I confirmed with system information that there is indead just a single drive, and that it thus came partitioned into 2 primary volumes (which, btw, still don't add up to 1TB BTW!). This setup really doesn't work for me, because the "larger" volume is still too small for all my photos, and it would be illogical and inconvenient to have to split up the photos so that some were on the C drive and some on the D drive.
Could I somehow merge the two partitions back into one primary drive, or at least re-size them so that the D drive had at least, say, 750GB, and shrink the C drive accordingly. He pointed me to the Disk Management utility and directed me to delete the (still empty) D drive, which would make that storage space unallocated, then extend the C drive to use that unalocated space. I was able to delete the D drive, and confirmed that there was now 530+ GB of unallocated space. However, when I click on the C drive the option to extend is greyed out.
I did a bit of Googling at this point and discovered that you can can only extend to contiguous unallocated space, and the unallocated space was NOT contiguous - there is a 350MB "Recovery Partition" between the C and D (or unallocated) spaces. In fact, there were multiple recovery and other partitions. (From left to right: 100MB "EFI System Partition", 900MB "Recovery Partition", 370+GB "Primary" C Drive with Boot etc, 350MB "Recovery Partition", 530+GB "Primary" D drive, and 20+GB "Recovery Partition").
Of course I would be too scared to delete the recovery partition, but there's no option to do so anyway ...
I asked the family member again and he suggested creating a USB Recovery Drive and, in the process, wipe the recovery partition. So used the windows utility to create a recovery drive, and sure enough, at the end it asked if I wanted to delete the recovery partition and I said yes. The good news is that this removed the 20GB partition, and I was able to extend the D drive to use that newly unallocated space. The bad news is that the 350MB recovery partition still lies between the C and D drives, preventing me from merging the two.
Again through Googling I found that there are tools I could use to force delete the recovery partition, but I'm afraid to do so and kill my computer or recovery options all together. I also heard that this 350MB recovery partition was created when I upgraded to 8.1, and that rolling back to my factory setting won't remove the partition?
So the question is, what can I do? Is there an easy way to "move" the recovery partition to the end of the drive without breaking any functionality that it might have? What would happen to my computer if this recovery partition were to "break" or get removed? Is it best that I just "live with it" the way it is despite the inconvenience?
I have a laptop that has an SSD with Win 8.1 + programs, and an HDD for projects. They are both formatted GPT. When I launch Macrium, for some reason my SSD is now GPT 1 and the second drive is now GPT 2. This is confusing because I'm used to imaging the top line of partitions which is usually my OS. Now that the GPT numbers are reversed, I have to be careful when doing my backups. How to change this assignment so that the SSD will be GPT1 again?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI want to create a second primary partition on my first harddisk(disk 0 look at picture)
from the free space there in the extended partition(view screenshot). Now my problem is that whenever I want to create a new partition by right clicking and selecting "New Simple Volume" and selecting the formatting etc, I get another logical drive in the extended partition(look at picture below).
Is is not what I want. I want to move that free space out from the extended partition and add the unallocated 9 MB to it and then create a second primary partition on disk 0.
Note: If its possible I want to do this without using any third party software, IF POSSIBLE.
This is my basic spread prime contains a win 7 installation(active) halo contains a win 8 installation(boot) and is a logical partition What I need to do is: format prime and combine it with halo , this will be my boot and active keep logic and halo as it is an my logical drives I cannot lose data in halo or logic. how do I go about doing this ..
View 2 Replies View RelatedI just got a refurbished ASUS K75DE laptop, and it came with Windows 8 on it. I am wanting to run a dual boot with Win7, so I disabled fast-boot just fine, and went into the UEFI BIOS and disabled the secure boot.
While I was there, I did like I have always done and set a BIOS boot-up password. I then proceed to boot to my Win7 installer USB Flash drive, but I was running low on battery power so I aborted the install and shut the computer down to try again later.
Now however when I get into BIOS to select boot priority, all options are grayed out except for system time and a few other non-essentials. At the bottom of the first BIOS screen it says "User Level : User" and I can't seem to find a way to reverse this issue. So now I'm stuck, can't boot to anything but the HDD because it is first by default.
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.
Client computer that shows black screen with text at boot up. Cannot boot into Windows 8 (8.1?)
This is what is on the black screen;
Your PC needs to restat.
Please hold down your power button.
Error Code 0x0000012a
Parameters:
0x0000000000000001
0x0000000000000046
0x0000000000000000
0x0000000000000000
After re-boot a message shows
Prepairing Auto Repair
Diagnosing PC
PC Did Not Start correctly either with 2 options - Restart and trying any of the Advanced Options
Restart option did nothing but restart this cycle of BSOD, etc. Advanced options to troubleshoot (Refresh, Reset, System Repair, Command Prompt are not available due to the following message:" You need to sign in as an administrator to continue, but there aren't any administrator accounts on this PC"
No system recovery disks or Windows 8 Installation media available.
PS :Cannot boot into Windows 8
Windows 8.1 failing to boot when any usb storage drive is plugged in during boot. My only solution is to unplug everything each boot unless I use my KVM switch which does not support usb 3.0.
View 2 Replies View RelatedMy Dell Inspiron 660 is 2 months old. It came with Windows 8 preinstalled. My problem: I am trying to change the boot order so I can boot from CD ROM as a first option. I have tried using the "F" keys on boot, but it just ignores me and goes on to boot up. I have also tried the "Advanced Options > UEFI Firmware Settings" in "Change PC Settings" and got the same results. I spent some time on the phone with a Dell tech. After trying all the things I had already tried, he and his supervisor decided I must have a bad Motherboard. Does this sound right? Is there any way to repair this problem?
View 9 Replies View RelatedI recently felt the urge to experiment with Linux and installed Ubuntu Mint and tried to set up dual booting.
However I seem to have only suceeded in preventing Windows booting at all. I cannot get into the recovery drive to undo my wrong doing.
How can I reset the windows boot manager without access to windows or recovery partitions?
.I have an HP Pavilion Slimline PC desktop. It does not allow me to boot from CD/DVD drive or USB connection. Windows 8.1. I wish to be able to use the boot options cd/dvd and all the USB options. I can't use any of the options. I list bios setup options and suggestions given to me from articles but I'm not sure I'm afraid of error. I don't have that much experience in bios setup.
Articles have said in BIOS setup Security is to be disabled. I suppose Legacy remains disabled(?). It is suggested that I shutdown and reboot.
BIOS Setup > Storage > Boot Order has this list:
UEFI Boot Sources
Windows Boot Manager
USB Floppy/CD[code]....
At bottom of this Boot Order Window are the options: F5=disable Enter=drag F10=accept ESC=cancel
Windows Boot Manager at the the top stops all other options.beneath it. How does that 'drag' work. Don'tr I have to move 'Windows Boot Manager' to the bottom?
And move ATAPI CD/DVD drive to the top? of this UEFI boot sources list?
Is it true that if there is an error in the BIOS Boot Setup and Windows 8.1 does not boot, the BIOS Setup will come up instead so one can do a fix?
I had an issue with my Windows 8 where I was forced to reinstall it. I have completely wiped my SSD and reinstalled Windows 8 on it. However, now it will not let me pick my boot order. It is forcing me to use Windows Boot Manager as my Boot Option 1. If I use anything else, I just get a black screen with a blinking line cursor.
It didn't use to do this before I had to reinstall. I'm not sure how to fix this. It also will not let me choose F11 boot options, it always is forcing me to use Windows Boot Manager.
How do I make it so I can boot from whichever boot order I want, instead of using Boot Manager?
I have Kubuntu 13.10 and Windows 8.1 installed on separate drives on my computer. Dual-booting through the Linux bootloader works fine, as in I can boot either Windows 8.1 or Linux without incident. However, whenever I boot Windows, it resets itself to the highest boot priority, and always re-adds a boot entry if I remove it. My question is, how can I get it to stop doing this? I can temporarily fix it through Linux, but I'd really like to stop it permanently, as it's starting to become a pain.
EDIT: It turns out my problem was related to a duplicate entry for Ubuntu. If you're having this problem and have tried to install Linux a couple of times, check to make sure that you only have one entry for it.
I have a Dell Inspiron 17, 5000 Series (1.7 GHz Intel Pentium 3558U, 4 GB Ram, 500 GB HDD). It came preloaded with Windows 8.1. I needed Windows 7 so I partitioned the main drive and installed Windows 7 in 100 GB of partitioned space. After swapping between the Windows 7 and 8 Boot manager. Ended up choosing the Windows 8 manager.
My problem comes in when I boot into Windows 7, then when I shut down and try and boot into Windows 8 it will hang prior to the boot manager (of Windows 8). I have to press and hold the power button to hard shut down. Once I do that and reboot, Windows 8 Boot manager and Windows 8 boot ok.
So Windows 8 will boot fine if I was last in Windows 8. However if I was last booted in Windows 7 then go to Windows 8 (or try and boot into 7 again, but using the 8 boot manager) it will hang at boot. I've used all the command checks with Windows 7 and 8. Found no errors. I can't reinstall Windows 8 as I don't have recovery disks, plus the computer came from Aarons Rent to Own (they had no issues me doing what I wish with it).
When I switch and use the Windows 7 boot manager I can boot back into Windows 7 even if Windows 7 was my last boot. But like when using the Windows 8 boot manager, I am unable to boot into Windows 8 if Windows 7 was booted last. But Can boot to Windows 8 if Windows 8 was booted last.
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.
Can I (correctly) convert my current 8.1 (retail) into VHDX and boot from it using the same 8.1 boot loader or not?
I honestly don't know if I would be running two instances. Would it work if I deleted the C:/ partition and booted the VHD from another disk or partition? Would that be OK? Seems to me it would be two instances but I don't know.
I'm not interested in VMware or VirtualBox - just Hyper-V or some similar bare metal solution. Hyper-V server I could not make work really - it is not what it is designed for - I want wifi, bluetooth etc. Windows server would work but I can not afford it.