I had not heard this but A Guy knows his stuff so having less than 40mb free space on the Sys Reserved partition must have been what was blocking your image from being created. I have 73mb free on mine and it makes an image.
However this problem should now be solved by recovering the System MBR into Win7 as the 100mb is no longer System Active, correct? Please post the Disk Mgmt screenshot so we can see.
And again: can you now make a Win7 backup image stored to data drive?
here's what disk management is saying. ...i'm not really sure what i did earlier, but it is fixed now. things are they way they were, including windows backup is having the same issue about not finishing. SYSTEM partition still only has 37.7mb free space.
sorry, and nope. still cannot make a Windows 7 backup image stored to data drive
Did you run the exact DIskpart commands given to mark Win7 partition Active, mark 100mb System Reserved Inactive and then run Startup Repair, as they are not changed.
no i did not. i did the opposite using the windows 7 disk i had so that i could get the computer to boot again.
if you can do the DISKPART from any cmd.exe when the computer is booted normally, then yes i can do that now.
however, i don't know what you mean by running startup repair?
Here is the Seven Forums tutorial on removing the System Reserved partition: System Reserved Partition - Delete
Follow this with Startup Repair run up to 3 times with reboots until Win7 starts: Startup Repair
Or you can use A Guy's approach which should also work since you haven't gotten rid of SysReserved partition yet. I was trying to get you started up while solving the imaging problem by deleting 100mb and recovering System MBR into Win7.
ok, i understand what you're saying now. i followed all links and am printing everything out. i'm going to follow those steps and ill post again when its all done.
thanks for your help
socrgy9, sorry this turned into an ordeal for you. My method would have been a workaround. Gregs method removes the 100MB partition, and thus the issue we think is creating your original problem. Gregs method is ultimately better for you. He originally meant it to fix your boot problem, and the original problem in one fell swoop, but deleting the partition should be a more elegant way than creating a new larger one. A Guy
thanks A guy! i don't care if its an ordeal, i just wanted the thing fixed! :) you guys have been great. ill post when fixed
Well, we appreciate that. We're both in CA., so we're pretty bleary eyed about now. We'd actually be interested to see if creating a new , larger partition would have fixed it. Let us know what you find out either way. A Guy
There is an easier-to-use graphical interface to do all of this using free Partition Wizard bootable CD. BareFootKid just wrote up a tutorial about using it to remove the 100mb Sys Reserved partition:
Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD
Using it might be easier for you to delete 100mb and also resize Windows 7 into the deleted 100mb HD space at the same time.
Look it over to see if you like it. I think PW is the coolest tool we use here. Before I would type out all the steps to do this (about a hundred times) but BareFoot has now done it for us with pictures.
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